Learn More About Forge: https://www.forgeforward.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. Evangelist Adrian DePray. Thank you for being on the evangelism podcast.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (00:12):
What an honor, gift from God. Thank y’all for listening.This is awesome. So thanks for having me. You’re a giant, so I’m glad to be here. Me and John to Baptist have a lot in common. He’s Unworth of Tone Ty Jesus Handles and I’m probably Unworthy of Tony Tie yours. So that’s good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:26):
Well, we are together in the nation of Ghana for a great love Ghana festival with a global network of evangelists. And you came with a whole team from your ministry that you’re a part of called Forge.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (00:44):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:44):
And last year I got to meet Charlie, who’s with Forge. And I interviewed him for the Evangelist podcast. So now I got you.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (00:53):
Oh, good. Yeah, good. Very good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
Yeah. So you’ve been an evangelist for many years.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (00:58):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Tell me how did you get started as an evangelist and where has God brought you from then until now?
Evangelist Adrian Despres (01:06):
Okay. So I got saved as a freshman in college, became a Christian, walked into my room drunk. God, bam, saved me. My roommate led me to Christ. Big deal. Everything changed. Started reading the Bible. Started preaching a month later. Been preaching ever since. That’s 83. So that’s before dirt was invented. Dirt was invented just after that. So it’s before you were … No, you were there. I was going to 79, but almost. Okay. So you’re four years old. Okay. So read through the Bible several times in my first four years there. And then reading one time as a sophomore, I felt like the spirit of God said, “I need you to be a minister for me. ” So I go to seminary after being a youth pastor for a few years and I go to seminary and in seminary, I’m praying one Monday morning. So this is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
(01:50):
I’m going to do it real quick. Come on, real quick. Just relax. I’m working here. Okay. So real quick, Monday morning, I’m praying, God, what do you want me to do? So I narrowed it down. If you could imagine, I narrowed it down too. I could be an evangelist, I could be a youth pastor, I could be a pastor. I could go to medical school and be a medical missionary because I had a pre-med degree, or I could be a missionary. I had it narrowed down to those five, which is like the whole spectrum of my first speaker. So that was Monday morning. Tuesday morning and God’s providence appreciate you bringing up that word. It’s pretty important word. So in God’s providence, I get picked to speak in chapel, testimony chapel. I’m one of the seven guys. I give my testimony. The president who’s a holy man grabs me by the arm and says, “You’re an evangelist.” I went, but I’m like that guy who’s praying on top of the roof when there’s a flood.
(02:36):
I said, “Lord, would you please save me? ” A boat comes up. I says, “No, the Lord’s going to save me. ” And a helicopter comes and says, “No, the Lord’s going to save me. ” And I die from the flood. And I say to the Lord, “Why didn’t you save me? ” I set a boat and a helicopter. So that’s me. I’m kind of a stubborn dude, bless my heart. So second day, and the president says, “You’re an evangelist.” Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning, drive into a prayer meeting, 6:00 AM for the paternity system at South Carolina. And I’m on the way there and a vision lays down on my car. Now, I’ve only had this happen twice in my life, so it’s not usual, but it was like an alter skate experience, I guess. It was like laid down and I wept, broke, screamed at a homeless guy.
(03:17):
I’m supposed to be an evangelist. And I had all this stuff lined up in front of me. So I get home, tell my wife supposed to be an evangelist. We both celebrate going to bed at that night. I said, “How do I be an evangelist?” “I don’t know how to be an evangelist. “”What’s an evangelist?” I don’t even know what it does. So that’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, now, Thursday morning. You’re not going to believe me when I say this. You’re going to go, “You’re lying.” And listen, preachers that they lie going bad spots. So Thursday morning, I get a phone call from a guy named Dwight Robertson. He’s the president of a thing called Kingdom Building Ministries. I didn’t know that. He discipled the guy who went after me in testimony chapel, Mick Veach, McVeach missionary to Ajabajan, started the church in Ajabajan, started multiple churches for first churches in Ajabajan.
(04:01):
This is the guy who did it. Great preacher, great guy. I said, “You led him to Christ and disciple him. You must be a stud. How can I help you? ” He said, “Would you be interested in applying to be an itinerative interest on our staff?” Now, this is back when we had phones that had chords on. Okay. I know you don’t remember and all you … So I picked up the phone real quick after I dropped. I said, “Hey, who are you? What do you believe? Are you liberal, conservative? What do you believe?” The National Association of Evangelicals said, “We just studied their mission statement, really good.” So we talked for three hours, didn’t do anything about it. What Dwight told me six months later is he said he had been praying for another speaker and he said, God gave him a page and a half of characteristics of what that speaker is supposed to be like.
(04:47):
He had one application sent to him every 10 days for the last year and a half, 45 applications. And he said, none of them fit the characteristics. While I was explaining the vision that God gave me the day before, he said he went down in order and checked them all off. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:02):
You checked off the whole list?
Evangelist Adrian Despres (05:04):
Every one of them. He told me, and he showed me the piece of paper with tear stains on it. He said, right there it is. I checked them all off, right in order. About two weeks later, I get told that if I say yes to this one ministry, my name and picture will be in the hands of 40,000 youth pastors. The next day, my testimony, my bio were already on the flyer. I said, “No, I think I should go with this one here.” Relatively unknown, never heard of them myself, but I just got saved a few years before, so I don’t know. And I think I should go with them. I feel like God wants me to go with them, and I’ve been with them ever since 36 years.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:41):
And so that ministry is called Forge.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (05:44):
Called Forge now. It used to be Kingdom Building Ministries. We changed our name about 15 years ago to Forge.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:48):
And so tell us, what does Forge do?
Evangelist Adrian Despres (05:51):
Okay. Forge, we have 24 speakers on our staff and they go all over the world and we preach the gospel and we preach strong, powerful. Lives on purpose. Lives on fire, hearts on purpose. Lives on purpose, hearts on fire. Just relax. I’ll get it eventually. But we do a lot of speaking, but we have a theme about us. See, Billy Graham, I saw three tears on his cheek when he came to my church. His song leader was Cliff Barrows. Cliff Barrows was my mentor. So he told me all kinds of … I never met Billy Graham. So I wasn’t the kind of guy who said, “I want to meet him.” That wasn’t me. I’m keeping my distance and just God will work it out. So I saw him though to cry three tears. Now that’s a miracle because he never cries. He has to have drops in his eyes because he has no tear glands.
(06:37):
They’re burned out. So he can’t cry. So he had three tears on his cheek. He said, God gave me three tears as a miracle today doing the funeral for Billy Barrows, Cliff Barrows, his wife. He said, “I’ve done two things wrong in my ministry. And I’m just a young guy. I’m leaning forward. What did Billy Grant
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:53):
Do wrong? What did go wrong?”
Evangelist Adrian Despres (06:54):
So he said- Because
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:55):
He did a lot of things
Evangelist Adrian Despres (06:56):
Right. He did a lot of things right. So first thing he said was, “I didn’t need to stay in Los Angeles for that many months. I didn’t need to preach several months in a row away from my home. I didn’t know my family. I didn’t need to do that. ” That’s the first thing he said. Second thing he said was he didn’t have a good follow-up system and it grieved him. To the grave, it grieved his heart. So our ministry forged, we have a rule that Cliff Barrows told me that Billy told him to tell me only be gone 15 days a month. So we started that 36 years ago when I first started. All of our speakers are only allowed to be gone 15 days a month. So now we know our families. The second thing is we have a follow-up program that’s intense.
(07:41):
We even have a training program for young advantages to teach them how to be itinerant speakers called fire brands. And we train young … I mean, like you know the stuff we run into on the road, they don’t teach this stuff in seminary. So the seminaries across the country, we’ve gotten in touch with several of them. They get credit, biblical credit for taking our courses on training. I
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:06):
Think that’s so valuable. There needs to be more training for evangelists. There’s a lot of seminaries that train pastors, train chaplains and counselors, but I think we need to raise up more evangelists. I agree.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (08:21):
I had a guy named Brian Kingsmore in the seminary I went to. He was a Irish evangelist, spoke just like an Irish evangelist, fireball, preaching repentance and I’m just amazed at him. But if I hadn’t have had him, how would I have known how to be an evangelist? And he took me under his wing and taught me how to get out there and be careful on the road and all these other things that no one really knows how to do. But ever since then, my schedule’s been completely booked up. Completely booked up. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:53):
Talk to me a little bit about your ministry. You said something to me yesterday that I found very interesting. You said that you feel that a big part of your calling is to make sure people in the church are saved. Yes. What did you mean by that? Yes. And how does that translate
Evangelist Adrian Despres (09:09):
Into
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:09):
How you minister?
Evangelist Adrian Despres (09:10):
That’s a great question. I’m a little bit different as an evangelist. I’m not quite like a … Well, that’s kind of stupid for me to say I’m not like a Graham. Of course you’re not like a fuck. Just relax. Okay. So I’m a little bit different. I consider myself an evangelist to the church. And what does that mean? Billy Graham said he believed 70% of the church, people who went to church from both liberal and conservative churches, Catholic involved as well. 70% of people go to church don’t know the Lord personally. I talked to a guy who led the prayer ministers for the Southern Baptist Convention, T.W. Hunt. He says he believes 80% of the Southern Baptist Church roles. Don’t know the Lord personally. So 50% of the roles are not there. They come in and get baptized, get the ticket to heaven and they’re out.
(09:56):
So there’s a significant percentage. So I have this message that I developed many years ago. I have a bunch of messages. I’ve memorized 48 so far and I’m always writing new messages, but there’s travelers. We have our ones that really stick well. It seems like the Lord’s annoying things on them. One’s called the four chairs. The first chair, they love God. They’re not perfect, but they’re getting better. They’re in growing growth. The secret to it is, if you love me, you’re going to obey my commands. Obedience is not a burden to these people because it’s based on love. So that’s the first chair. They love God. Second chair, they’re a Christian, but they’ve gotten used to God through time. What did Jesus say to the Ephesians church? “You’ve left your first love. If you don’t repent, I’m going to remove my lampstand from among you.
(10:39):
” The next generation in Ephesus there, the next generation church was gone. And the next generation, the usibius wrote about how the church was destroyed. Oh, actually swallowed up by the ocean. It’s under the water now.
(10:56):
So that’s what Jesus said. They’ve left their first love. That’s the second chair. Dangerous seat. I wish that you were hot or cold. Now, that verse, I wish that you were hot or cold in Revelation three is not saying I wish that you were on fire for God or against God. That’s not what it’s saying. Hot or cold were two streams that came in the northern part of Leotasia. They’re still there today. One’s a cold stream and came from the mountains of snow melting. One was a hot spring. It’s still there today. When the two waters came together in the center of and the river there, it made a mineral deposit in the water. The water’s disgusting. To this day, you can’t drink it. I wish that you’re hot or cold. Both of those are useful. But because you’re lukewarm, I’m going to spew you out of my mouth.
(11:39):
That’s the second seed. The second seed is vomit. Now don’t get me wrong. Jesus loves the people. Loves them with an everlasting love. Ezekiel 33: three. You want to say something? Go ahead.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:50):
No, go ahead with the chairs.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (11:53):
Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry.That was actually good because he’s like- I’m
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:56):
Thinking. I’m thinking.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (11:57):
I’m thinking.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:58):
So the first chair is people who love Jesus.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (12:00):
Love Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:01):
Second chair is people who used to love Jesus.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (12:03):
But they’ve left their first love.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:04):
They’ve lost their first love.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (12:05):
That’s it. That’s it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:06):
And you see that a lot in the church today.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (12:09):
Think about this. The Ephesians church was planted by Paul around 61 AD. John wrote the book of Revelation around 95, give or take a few years. That’s 34 years. That was one on fire for God and Ephesus. The Book of Ephesians, a great book. Power of God in that book. And 34 years later, Paul says, or John says, “You’ve left your first love.” Or Jesus says through John, you’ve left your first love. Is that going to happen to me? I’m constantly concerned about maintaining a first love relationship with Jesus. All right. Third chair, the most controversial chair, third chair. Are you with me? First chair, they love God. Second chair, they’re saved, but they’ve kind of gotten used to God, complacent, epathetic. Jesus calls them puke. How are you doing? So third chair. Third chair is the most dangerous one on the stage. It’s the one that glorifies Satan.
(12:58):
The fourth chair, Satan loves. Third chair glorifies him. Now, what does this mean? The third chair is someone who believes that they’re in the second chair, but they’re in the fourth chair and they don’t know it. Now am I talking about someone who lost their salvage? No, no, no. I don’t get into that controversial smack. We’re evangelists. We don’t get into that controversial stuff. I’ll let y’all pastors do that. So watch this now. So when I’m talking about someone who prayed to receive Christ and didn’t mean it. Never repented, never surrendered, just did it because it was something they’re supposed to do. Now your parents, it’s time to get baptized and you pray to receive Christ. I was at the front of a church one time. There’s 29 students that came down. I’m the youth pastor, middle school youth pastor. There’s 29, seven, eight, nine, 10 year old kids come down because we’re having a baptism that night and I’m fired up shaking all their hands.
(13:43):
Every parent except for one said, “We just thought it was time to little Johnny give their life to Christ.” And I went, “What are we doing? Are we talking people to get saved?” No one wants to go to hell. At least I’ve only met one guy in my life said he wanted to go to hell. And 30 minutes later, he was convinced otherwise. And he’s actually a youth pastor now in South Carolina. He got saved after I told him, “Nah, you don’t want to go to hell.” And I explained it to him.
(14:05):
So why not just get saved, quote unquote, get saved, get all the benefits of eternity and live however you want. And that seems to be a very popular testimony. I got saved when I was a kid, but then I went away and lived like the devil. And then I got saved when I was 29. I don’t know. Maybe you got to save when you were 29. I’m not going to judge that. I don’t care. But all I care is how you’re living now. So when people aren’t sharing their faith, 95% of people go to church today have never let someone else to Christ. 95% have never let someone else to Christ. If you’re saved, you tell other people. 88% don’t tithe. What kind of person would not tithe? And I call tithing minimalistic Christianity because you’re supposed to tithe and offer. So who would just tithe?
(14:51):
Can we mute that out of there? So the third chair, someone who thinks that they’re safe. So how do you know the difference between … Now here’s what gets tricky. You hold up the second chair in the third chair and they’re the same color. You go, these two look exactly the same. Almost impossible to tell the two apart. The second chair, some conviction there. Third chair, they sin, but it doesn’t bother them. That’s how you know the Holy Spirit of God. If the spirits inside of you Ephesians 1:13 and 14, when you hear the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed your mark cotoke with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, a deposit guarantee your inheritance to the days of redemption. So the spirit of God’s inside of every person who believes. Colossians 1:26 and 27, Christ is in your hope of glory.
(15:32):
John 14:23, the Father takes up residence. You have the entire Trinity. I’ve got the power. Okay, sorry. We can edit that out. Okay. So the Holy Spirit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all inside of a person. So when they sin, the Spirit of God says, “I don’t like that. ” My Spirit says, “I agree. I don’t like it either.” I’m a kind of a dual kind of guy. So I don’t like it either. And you feel bad, it’s called conviction. If you don’t feel bad when you’re lying, cheating, gossiping, looking at stuff you’re not supposed to look at, if you don’t feel bad, pretty good chance you might not be saved. The other evidence is by your fruit, you know you’re a Christian, by your fruit, scripture says. Love, joy, peace. That’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:10):
Really scary because there’s a lot of people that are probably in that chair.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (16:13):
A lot of people, I think as many as 80%.That’s my burning soul. And so
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:20):
Then the fourth chair is people that are turned away from God.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (16:23):
They know they’re not saved.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:24):
They are saying, I don’t even believe in God.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (16:28):
They don’t even know him. There’s a significant percentage wherever I go that don’t know him. That’s the fourth chair. I love atheists. I’m like an atheist magnet for some reason. The Lord has given me favor to have led hundreds of atheists to Christ. I have story after story to story about that. On a flight, I was just telling a buddy of mine about a $2,500 suit guy works for the defense department, prayed to receive Christ because I convinced him that God had created the world. And he said, “That just changed everything.” Raises his hands and ear.He says, “I need to get bored again right now. While we’re landing, it was weeping on his 2,500 other pair of pants, praying to receive Christ as we landed.” I love atheists.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:07):
And so you’re preaching in a church, you’re laying out these four chairs, and then talk to me about the altar call.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (17:15):
Okay. The altar call is significant because I say, if you’re in the four chair, I hold it up. You need to tell the Lord you’re sorry about your sins. Tell them you’re sorry about lying, cheating, gossiping, lesting. And then say to Jesus, I want to give you everything I am, everything I am, all of my past, all of my present, all of my future. I surrender all to you. Then I say to the crowd, now watch this. I said, I haven’t talked about grace yet. All this is about what’s going on in our lives. I haven’t talked about grace yet. Grace says you don’t go from the fourth chair to the third chair to the second chair to the first chair like it’s some kind of performance system. Grace says you go from the fourth chair and you jump all the chairs and. You’re in the first chair.
(17:57):
And I look at the first chair and I stack them up. And I say the third chair. Now if you, I even tell people this, listen, if you’re wondering if you’re saved, if you’re not sure, if you’re not 100% sure, if you haven’t … I mean, you’re not sharing your faith. You’ve got all these besetting sins that are just crushing you. If you’re not sure, listen, don’t die. What are you doing? Don’t die. Tell the Lord you’re sorry about your sins and surrender yourself to him. I don’t care if it’s a rededication. I don’t care. I don’t keep a bunch of notches on my belt. We had 15,000 people too good. I don’t do that. My whole point here is I want every third chair person to get saved. That’s my calling.That’s the evangelist in me. It’s the third chair. I am burning in my soul for revival in the church today.
(18:40):
And I’ve been seeing some of it too. It’s pretty significant. So I say to them, if you’re in this third chair, you tell Jesus you’re sorry about your sins. I confess your sins to God. Say, Lord Jesus, I’m sorry. If you’re interested in doing this and you want to surrender everything you are, then put it in the first chair. Then I say to the second chair, if you are complacent and apathetic and you know it and your heart is on fire, you’ve been mad at me because this message has taken too long and you want to have the invitation now. You know what I’m talking about. One time I was preaching it at a 20,000 member church in Kansas City and the head deacon, nice suit tie, everything stands up and says, “I’m in the third chair. I finally figured out what’s wrong with me.
(19:22):
” I said, “Well, what are you doing? Stand up. Keep going down and get on your face.” He comes down and lays on his face. I wasn’t done preaching yet. He came down. Almost all the deacons of that mega church came down. And when we were done, two thirds of the church was emptied. I did the invitation while they’re laying on their face and everyone’s weeping and crying out loud and whatnot. And I said, “Listen, if you’re in the second chair, tell the Lord you’re sorry about your sins and re-surrender your life.” They’re all three the same prayer almost because it’s the same product, the first chair.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:56):
Yeah, that’s awesome. So through Forge, you’re training young evangelists. What is some of the advice that you would give to young evangelists?
Evangelist Adrian Despres (20:08):
Yeah, there’s three Gs you should never touch as a young evangelist. Three, don’t touch the gold. Don’t make money a reason for you to do anything. Don’t love money. Don’t make it. I did an event one time, you’re going to laugh at this, 10 days in Iowa and there were kids running through the woods screaming, “Who’s some deepest chasing me? ” I’m going, “Oh my stars, what’s going on at this camp?” Come to find out there’s a witch’s coven that had been fasting for 30 days that this camp would be closed. Once I found that out, I said, “Oh, that’s easy. I’m going to pray. I’m going to fast for one day and watch what God does.” And he just destroyed everything but the greatest revival this camp had ever seen kind of thing. And it was pretty fun to watch. They gave me $147.50.
(20:58):
$147.50 for two weeks of preaching. Now I’m only allowed to be gone or 10 days of preaching. I’m only allowed to be gone two weeks a month. So that’s pretty much my month’s salary. $147.50. Then they asked me-
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:11):
You’re living the big life.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (21:12):
I’m living, man. I’m spoiled rotten. So I know we are spoiled. Then they asked me right after they handed me the check, “Will you come back next year?” And I never ever answered then. I always pray about it. On the plane, I’m going, “I ain’t going, man. 50 cents.” The spirit of God spoke to my heart, “You’re going to touch the gold.” The next year they gave me 1,500 bucks. No explanation, no nothing. I said, “Oh, okay. I guess.” And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:41):
So you didn’t make it about the money, whether you said yes or no, you went because there are people that needed Jesus.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (21:48):
That’s it. That’s it. Don’t touch the gold. As a young speaker, don’t let money be a reason for you to go or not go. Second Jeep, don’t touch the glory. People are going to praise you. They’re going to think, “Man, my heart’s burning in the spirit of God.” They think you did something. You know what I’m saying? You’re an evangelist. You know, you’ve seen them come up to you and say, “Oh, Don’t touch the glory.” Now there’s three ways to respond to praise. You can be, “Yeah, I’m pretty good. I’m not worried about that for him. He ain’t going to be prideful. I’m sorry. He’s just a stud dog. Jesus wise, he ain’t going to be prideful. Yeah, I’m pretty good on it. ” The second one, I’m really concerned about him and all y’all and me. The second one’s called false humility. What is false humility?
(22:33):
Dangerous hitting it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:34):
Well …
Evangelist Adrian Despres (22:35):
Well, yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:37):
Thank
Evangelist Adrian Despres (22:37):
You. No, no, no. It was the Lord.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:39):
It was the Lord.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (22:40):
That’s a famous lie. I was
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:41):
The one who brought the Lord.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (22:43):
See, people who say, no, no, no, it was the Lord are making the person who encouraged them to feel horrible. Like you’re an idiot for saying that because it was God who did. Number two, you know God used you and you just lied. It was the Lord, yes. But you know he used you. By default, sorry, get over yourself. The third way to receive praise is called indifference, or I call it indifference. Water off a duck’s bag. Someone praises me. I drop my eyes, say, “Thanks a ton, man. I’m honored. What’d the Lord show you? ” Then I get back to what the Lord showed them, so it goes back to God anyways, and I haven’t discouraged them. And I say to the person, “I’m honored. Thank you. I’m honored.What a glorious gift. Thank you. What’d he show you? ” And then boom. So don’t touch the girl.
(23:32):
I mean, don’t touch the goal. Don’t touch the glory. Oh, I messed it up. Don’t touch the girl. Or for some of you, don’t touch the guy. The girl’s out there. So don’t touch the-
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:42):
Or the guys these days.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (23:45):
Personal file. Yellow cards. One more and you’re album.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:49):
Don’t touch.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (23:50):
Don’t touch any of that stuff. Just don’t touch. Touch. Don’t touch. Come on, SpongeBob. So did I say, did I just quote SpongeBob just now? I just quoted SpongeBob and you knew what I was doing. None of these people, the baby boomers are the only ones who know. These Gen Z people, they don’t know. So I don’t know. Y’all grew up on SpongeBob. Get back to the story. Okay. So don’t touch the girl. Those three Gs are the three things I would say to a young speaker. Those three things are the ambushes of your soul. They want, and I have put out of ministry personally a handful of speakers and pastors who have failed in one of those three. In our ministry, we have a flyer, a writer that goes out that has headlined and bold, italics, bold everywhere. Only you cannot be picked up by opposite gender.
(24:49):
Cannot be picked up from the airport anywhere. You can’t because not that anything’s going to happen, but it has the perception or the perceiving of something happening. I don’t want to give any kind of air or any kind of note. When I go into hotel rooms, I put a towel over the TV and open my Bible there and put my wife’s pictures around there. Billy Graham tore a TV out of the wall and said my ministry said that they would pay for it because he didn’t want a TV in his room. And I said, “I’ve done … I can’t tell the TV out anymore. So I just put a towel over top of them, make a little…” I don’t make an idol there. I don’t do that. But I open my Bible up right there because that TV scares the fire out of me. I don’t want to look at something.
(25:28):
Now, if there’s a ballgame on television, I got a little grace about me. I call my wife and say, “Can I watch the Super Bowl?” Yeah, go ahead. I watched the Super Bowl. Got to be careful about the commercials, appreciate that. But I’m just saying don’t touch the 3Gs.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:45):
So with Forge, if someone is watching, they have a desire to be an evangelist, they maybe want to get more training in evangelism, or maybe even go through your discipleship program. How can they find out more information about how they could come and
Evangelist Adrian Despres (26:02):
Participate?
(26:03):
Yeah, good. Our website’s name is forgeforward.org. I know it’s long. Sorry. Did you see their thumbs good? Carpal tano. Okay. Forgeforward.org. And the name of the young itinerant training program is called Firebrands. The name of the training program for young adults, high school, college age, what most of them are, and some young adult, young thirties. It’s called equipping. So the equipping is very intense. We have a guy who’s trained by bear grills and we take them out in the woods and train them about how to survive. But mostly what we do is teach Bible truths and the concept of laborership and how our ministry is all about raising up laborers to be sent into the harvest field. So that’s really the theme of our ministries. And you asked earlier, that’s the theme, raising up laborers to send to the harvest field. So that’s what a whole purpose it is.
(26:56):
We have several people who have come through it. The pastor out at Saddleback was one of the guys who came through it. Steven Ferdick is one of the guys that came through it. I know I just did two controversial guys. Appreciate that. I like both of them. They’re great. Yes, me too. Me too. But they’re controversial. I’ve even texted … Well, we don’t need to get into that, but I’m just saying easy now. So I’m just saying we have missionaries and ministers all over the world that have come through our training program. So we train hard. I teach apologetics, hermeneutics, how to handle the word of God, how to share your faith. And we send you out in the streets to sell your faith in the streets. We teach how to tell your story, how to do bigger different things. And we teach a lot of that stuff, hands-on laborship material.
(27:43):
Some of them go into our deeper training in the fire branch. Some we go overseas into, or not overseas, but across the country, into Mexico, there’s 13 unreached people groups here. And we have planted a church in one of the unreached people groups. So one of the 13th, so now there’s 12 unreached people groups because now there’s a church there and it’s got several hundred people in it. And it’s pretty insignificant. We planted the churches, our ministry. It’s funny, that’s not our calling, but we did it anyways because these guys were with us and we went and took a whole group of trainees and we got them to work. So that’s our ministry.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:16):
So in the training program, talk to me about the format and how you equip young evangelists
Evangelist Adrian Despres (28:25):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:26):
Some of those areas that you mentioned.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (28:27):
Yeah. The young evangelist part is we teach and train them, make sure that they handle the word accurately. Center of biblical tension is where we maintain, because we’re speaking 357 different denominations so far.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:38):
So that means paying attention to the context.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (28:41):
Context is king, making sure they understand all that stuff, how to traverse airport, how to make sure the pastor looks like a hero, make sure the pastor looks like a hero like he’s the greatest thing ever, because you come in, you fly in, fly off and fly out and people think, “Man, my pastor’s not that good.” Well, you’ve done the message 175 times. He does his for one time. If you don’t make him loken- That’s good advice. You don’t
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:07):
Want to correct the pastor
Evangelist Adrian Despres (29:09):
For the content.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:11):
First of all, you’ll never be invited back.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (29:13):
Never be invited back. But if you say something that he has said and people look at the pastor and go, “Wait a minute, man, my pastor’s awesome.” If they think that you’ve won as an itinerant, you’ve won. Every time I get done with a church, I have the pastor come to the front and the staff and his family, family especially, especially the kids, they’re just getting hammered. So I say, “Come on up here. If you guys want to get behind your pastor and say, we need to move this town for Jesus. Y’all need to come down here and just pray with him and give him a big hug and take care of the family, take care of the kids, fist bump the kids, slip them some $5 bills and whatnot.” And I said, “If you’re going to … ” Then every time I pull my parachute at that point and slowly back out, I say goodbye before that, but I said, “Okay, this is my goodbye.
(29:58):
I got to run to the airport.” And And I get out of there so that I’m not the last person they’re thinking about from the revival. They’re thinking about their pastor and what the spirit of God has done then. So I don’t want to touch the glory.
(30:12):
The training programs, we do very similar stuff. We do a lot of Bible training, a lot of center biblical tension stuff. We don’t get into the controversial smack that’s going on dividing the church. And we kind of walk on walls as our tenorant speakers. You’ve done this for your whole life. We walk on walls. We watch people throw rocks over here. The Baptists are hitting the Lutherans and the Lutherans are hitting the Presbyterians. I say, “Hey, you just hit somebody over here.” We walk on the walls and watch them hit people. So we keep them from that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:41):
Stop throwing rocks.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (30:42):
Stop throwing rocks, guys. You don’t even know what you’re talking about anyways.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:45):
Yeah. I think that’s part of the gift of the evangelist is to bring churches together.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (30:49):
Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:50):
Especially in a context of this international ministry that we’re doing this week, that we bring churches from many different denominations together and say, “Let’s focus on the most important thing, which is Jesus.”
Evangelist Adrian Despres (31:04):
What’s the line we use? Many …
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:10):
Yeah. One message, many expressions.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (31:12):
One message, many expressions, like the guys who do the flips on the motocross and the-
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:18):
Yeah, that’s really the heart of the global network of evangelists, because there’s many different ways to preach the gospel. And so they use different means of attracting people. So they have BMX bike riders that are doing the flips, like you just said, singers, they sometimes bring in clowns, people that are dancers, DJs, that really relate to a younger generation. And each one gets up and shares the gospel. And so there’s many different expressions. I think in the past, we kind of had a picture in the body of Christ of the big man of God. Billy Graham came to town and everyone was supposed to get saved. And I think God’s doing something new in these times that God’s raising up a generation that there’s not one or two evangelists. Now we’re seeing an entire generation
Evangelist Adrian Despres (32:16):
That
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:16):
Is bold and sharing their
Evangelist Adrian Despres (32:17):
Faith. Which we’ve never seen before.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:19):
Yeah.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (32:19):
Billy Graham actually said in a conference, North American conference for itinerative evangelists. I was there in 1995 called Naci. And he said it was his fault. Now listen carefully. I’m leaning forward as a young, runny nose evangelist guy. He said, “It’s his fault.” And I’m going, “What do you mean it’s your fault?” He said, “In the early ’60s, late 50s when he started kind of thing, 40s, I guess, I forget 47. 47. Wow. Okay. So when he started and you’re going to have a church revival for your church, you weren’t going to call Billy Graham to be your guest evangelist because there was only Graham as far as people knew. And Billy said he was so famous that it was his fault that people didn’t know. So you called a pastor friend from another church in another state who went to seminary with you, good buddies kind of thing, called them.
(33:13):
And you called him evangelist in the meetings. Now, evangelist Bob’s going to get up and tell us about the Lord. And the anointing of the evangelist wasn’t there. He
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:25):
Was anointed as a pastor.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (33:26):
As a pastor. As he was a pastor. He had the anointing as a pastor. Now God has appointed some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Evangelists is one of the offices. Now, the anointing on the evangelist, not because … I was in a crusade where Billy was speaking, Billy Graham was speaking. I don’t know why I keep talking about him because I love the guy. So he was speaking and I brought two vans down there full of kids and I was thinking it’s going to be the greatest thing ever. And the storm was coming in and he only spoke for five minutes. 6,500 people got saved. And I’m sitting there in the crowd, all of a sudden a chill goes through my body. I looked around and it looked like a radiation. I said, That’s the calling of the evangelist. Our job is to call out and bring in the net and see people because God’s doing it.
(34:15):
God, we know we don’t lead people to Christ, only God can save people. But God’s the one who does it. And that anointing in the Southern Baptist Convention and North Carolina, the Southern Baptist Conventions are stopping doing revivals in their churches because of the loss of the evangelist and it didn’t work
(34:35):
Because the pastor showed up and it just didn’t work. So now, I hate to say it this way, because I’m not bragging here. I know who does it. But when I show up or when you show up, great numbers of people get saved and people are going, “What’s going on here?” It’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:50):
Revival.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (34:51):
It’s just the anointing of the office. We’re not that special. It’s just the office. It’s not because we know how to do it. I can teach anybody how to do it. It’s because of the anointing of God on us for that one purpose to bring people out of death, out of darkness and bring them to light, bring them out of confusion, into understanding. That’s our job. And then we hand them back to the pastor and say, “Now you disciple and train them. Raise them up.” And that’s the whole network right there. So I’ve always believed that a church should have a revival meeting in the spring and one in the fall, every year, just to keep this people on fire because the goal is to raise up laborers. Everybody out there, it’s like listen to the verse, listen to Ephesians 4:11. God has appointed some degree apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
(35:45):
The next verse says, “Their job is to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.” Now the word equipped comes from the Greek word alextusio, which means to mend the nets. Literally, James and John were men in that same exact Greek word. So our job as evangelists is not to lead people to Christ. It’s not our job. Sorry, brother. It’s not our job. Our job is to get them thinking themselves. Their job, our job is to equip the Saints to do the work of the ministry, which means to mend the nets so those people can catch the fish. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:17):
They can go fishing for men.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (36:18):
That’s their job. Now, I like to lead people to Christ, but then I like to say to them, now let’s go out and have an impact on others.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:26):
Yeah. Amen. Well, I want to finish with a testimony from this week that is part of equipping that you’re talking about. And that is the other night, Charlie Mark, who’s one of your forge evangelists, did a little training on how to preach, helping some of the young people that are here who they’re going to be sent out to all the different churches in the city on Sunday morning. And so some of them haven’t preached before and they just need to know what to preach. And so we’re talking and it was great. He shared, you shared. I got to share a little bit. Some of the other evangelists got to give their input. And it was really cool just to train in how to put together a sermon. And so then the next night, Molly, who is one of the young people that has gone through some of the training that you guys have done, we were out in one neighborhood and there was an opportunity to present the gospel.
(37:31):
And so some of the other girls got up and shared their testimony and I said, “Molly, why don’t you get up and do … ” She’s like, “No, you should do it. ” No, you’re here to preach the gospel. Get up there and preach. And Molly got up and she did such a great job. She shared the gospel, shared her testimony, and then she gave an altar call and all the kids raised their hands and God saved. And that’s what’s neat is that God is raising up evangelists like Molly that are going to make a difference in the lives of many people.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (38:07):
That is exactly why we’re here. Exactly. I mean, think about it. Molly was handed a microphone and in the middle of her message, an interpreter shows up on stage. They said, “You need an interpreter.” Start screaming right behind her while she’s talking and she didn’t skip a beat. I thought that’s pretty good. I mean, it made papa bear here and go, “Oh, let’s go. ” So it was really awesome to watch her do that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:35):
Let’s finish with the word of prayer for those who are watching and participating. As a senior evangelist, pray for those who feel called to be evangelists
Evangelist Adrian Despres (38:45):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:45):
Pray for them to be effective at
Evangelist Adrian Despres (38:46):
Who they’re
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:47):
Calling.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (38:47):
Well, let’s pray y’all. Lord, I pray in Jesus’ name that you’d raise up a number of evangelists from this call. I pray that this podcast would have fruit that remains that makes your joy complete. And I pray, Lord, that you’d keep these men and women who you call up close to your heart, guard them from the enemy. As a matter of fact, I speak the Lord rebuke you anything evil. I dare not speak a word against you. Save the Lord rebuke you. And I pray, Lord, in Jesus’ name, by the authority of Christ, by the blood of the land, by the words of our testimonies, that these young men and women would be protected from the enemy, that you would give them wisdom, give them character, give them fruit that remains. And I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this or not. It’s on a podcast, so it’s going to be for infinity and beyond.
(39:37):
But I pray, Lord, in Jesus’ name, that you’d give them more fruit than you’ve given Daniel and I.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:45):
Amen.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (39:46):
The only way possible, Papa, is if you do it. So I ask you, Lord, guard them, protect them, equip them and send them out, laborers and the harvest. We love you, Lord, in Jesus’ name and all God’s people said.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:00):
Amen.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (40:00):
Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:01):
Brother Adrian, thank you for being on the evangelist podcast.
Evangelist Adrian Despres (40:04):
I’m honored to be here. God bless you guys. We’ll see y’all later. I
