Do you want to be an influencer for Jesus? Frankie Cortez is a graduate of the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp. God has given him a vision to raise up social media influencers who can share the Gospel with a sight and sound generation. On today’s podcast we talk about why it is important to evangelize online and give you some tips for maximizing the impact of your social media.
Website: https://www.promisesinternational.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Do you wanna be an influencer for Jesus? Frankie Cortez is a graduate of Christ for All Nations evangelism. Bootcamp. God has given him a vision to raise up social media influencers who can share the gospel with a sight and sound generation. On today’s podcast, we talk about why it’s important to evangelize online, and we give you some tips for maximizing the impact of your social media. Plus, Frankie is going to share some stories from the different countries that he’s been working on, and you’ll hear about what God is doing in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Brazil, and in Ukraine. Let’s listen.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:54):
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 (01:19):
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, Frankie Cortez. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Frankie Cortez (01:30):
Thank you for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:32):
So let’s talk about how we first met you were a student at the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp in Orlando, Florida. And tell me, what did you learn going through the Evangelism Bootcamp?
Frankie Cortez (01:48):
Yeah, so I had the amazing opportunity to be part of the Evangelism Bootcamp at Christ for All Nations. Danielle King was actually one of my teachers. I learned how to organize crusades, how to plan them, how to preach at them, and then ultimately how to roll that out.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:02):
Well, I love pouring into other evangelists and helping people who have a passion for the great commission and going to nations all over the world. And so, do you remember some of what I taught in, in the sessions that we were together?
Frankie Cortez (02:18):
I yes. I remember you had systematic plans on how we can actually do this. I remember you had 300, I think it was 316 steps to be an effective evangelist. And I specifically remem I think it was number 17, is Find a Wife. I still haven’t found that one yet. <laugh>,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:33):
Absolutely. Well, when I found my wife, it really helped me out as an evangelist. Just gave me more credibility. But, uh, that, that plan that you’re, you’re talking about, I have, uh, a list of how to start a ministry and it’s because people kept coming to me and asking me questions like, well, how do I start a ministry? What do I do in, in order to start taking donations from, you know, how do I share my vision? And, and I kept getting the same questions over and over again. And especially like, like, how do I write a book, Daniel, you’ve written like 25 different books. How do I write my first book and how do I raise money for my ministry and how do I book speaking engagements at churches? And, and I kept getting all of these questions and, and so finally I decided I’m just gonna put one spreadsheet, all the answers to every question I get.
(03:23):
And so now if people ask me a question, I just send them a link to their spreadsheet and I have resources there. And I love coaching people that gives me a place to, to start coaching them in evangelism and helping them to become more effective in the ministry that God has called them to. And so if you’re listening and you’re interested in being coached in evangelism or being coached in how to start a ministry, uh, reach out to me and, and we’ll talk about doing that. All right. So Frankie, since you graduated from the the Evangelism Bootcamp, you’ve gone to a bunch of different places around the world and you’ve seen God do some amazing things. Kind of walk me through that journey and what you’ve seen God do.
Frankie Cortez (04:04):
Yeah, so it was amazing. The Evangelism Bootcamp showed me how practical it is to just duke Mass Gospel campaigns for right after our, our bootcamp, we had the opportunity to go to Tanzania. We were able to kind of apply what we learned by going to gospel outreaches on trucks where basically we would preach on trailers of semi trucks and we would go to different places around. I was in Moto Godo in Tanzania, and we would share the gospel and we would in marketplaces and on the streets, and we would see many people come to Jesus. We would go into schools and we would share the gospel to many thousands of children. We would give her that to Jesus. I also, within the last year, had the opportunity to travel to many different countries, um, like Pakistan and Brazil and Poland, uh, Mexico, Egypt, where I was able to have these big giant campaigns and bring in just the harvest of thousands of souls.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
Yeah. Tell me about the details of, of some of these events. You went to Egypt, what did you do in Egypt?
Frankie Cortez (05:02):
Yeah, so in Egypt, Egypt was very special in history. They’ve never actually had a mass gospel campaign in, in the Egypt history. I can’t say the C word cuz that one’s actually a bad word over there. But it was amazing. Two weeks before, um, our crusades started, we’ve been planning for an entire year and the biggest church in the city is actually set on fire. 40 people dying over 50 people are injured. And it was like, what do we do? God, is this something that we move forward or is it something that you want to maybe push ahead or something like that? God said, we want you to push forward, I want you to go and I want you to do this crusade. So we had to find a brand new location in a different part of the city in Cairo. And we found actually a Muslim military base in the middle of the hood in Cairo, Egypt.
(05:41):
And God poured out his spirit. So Daniel, you know, the marketing budgets for some of these, sometimes the marketing budgets are 10, 20, 30, $50,000, depending, you know, where you are. I remember in Cairo, Egypt, an event like that has never been done. So we put in about a thousand dollars of marketing. Day one, we had 5,000 people on the field, and by day five we had over 50,000 people on the field because God’s glory showed up, miracles, signs and wonders happened. People were literally coming up to us saying that they had dreams of Jesus and they were leading ’em to our event.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:11):
Wow. Well, when you have the Holy Spirit working with you, you don’t need much of a budget. And so that’s amazing. Did, did you know the, the first evangelist to ever go to Egypt was Mark who wrote the Gospel of Mark. And the story is that he went to Alexandria, which was founded by Alexandria the Great. And when Mark went into Alexandria, um, his shoe was, uh, it, it was a leather sandal and it had fallen apart as he traveled. So he went and found a shoemaker, and the shoemaker was, was fixing his shoe. And as he was working on it, the owl that he was working on, the leather slipped and went right through his hand. And right then Mark laid hands on him, prayed for him, and the shoemaker was healed. And so the mark became the first bishop of Alexandria. And then when he was martyred, they tied him some to some chariots and dragged him through the streets. And that’s how he died for Jesus. Uh, the, the shoemaker who got saved that day, when he was healed, he became the second bi bishop of Alexandria. And to this day, the Coptic Christians in al in Egypt, they traced their spiritual heritage back to Mark the writer of the Gospel of Mark. And so what a great thing that you got to go and be an evangelist in the footsteps of Mark. Yeah. And then you also went to Brazil. What’d you do in Brazil?
Frankie Cortez (07:43):
Yeah, so in Brazil we, we taught and trained on evangelism. We had a fire con a fire camp. So basically what that is, it’s a week long evangelistic training where we take a small group of 50 to 60 young people or old people, but they’re very interested in going forward in evangelism within their local country. So we trained about 50 evangelists there and we, and then we sent them out to the streets to apply what they learned. And we were raising people up out there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:05):
And you also went to Pakistan. What’d you do in Pakistan?
Frankie Cortez (08:08):
Yep. I, um, total in Pakistan, I’ve done four gospel campaigns where we saw tens of thousands of people come to Jesus crowds of 20 to 30,000 people, uh, miracles, signs and wonders happen. And we’re really seeing just God descend on some of these countries that people are like, is not possible. We’re, we’re still gonna go.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:25):
That’s absolutely amazing. Now how old are you?
Frankie Cortez (08:28):
I’m 25 years
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:29):
Old. So 25 years old. You’ve already been to a bunch of different countries. You’ve been seeing God to amazing miracles. And then, uh, you also recently worked in Ukraine. The, the, the war that’s been going on in Ukraine is absolutely horrible. Uh, what were you doing when you went there?
Frankie Cortez (08:47):
Yeah, so I went with my friends, uh, Slavik down, he has a ministry in Ukraine. So what basically what we were doing is we have, we, we had teams that were coming in from the United States, from Seattle, Florida, different parts of the United States. And they were going into Ukraine from both Poland and Romania. And they were going in and they were sharing the gospel, providing humanitarian aid help for the people cuz it’s just a very sad situation that’s happening. So what we were doing, we were actually raising teams up and teaching them how to evangelize in these places, how are we gonna roll out the humanitarian aid work? So we’re we’re also, we went to go shoot a documentary to kind of document what’s actually happening and what God is doing within the country. And that’s coming out pretty soon as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:26):
Wow, that’s amazing. Alright, just a few days ago I was on a Zoom call with you, with a bunch of other evangelists who had graduated from the Evangelism Bootcamp and they were all coming together to talk about how to be kingdom influencers on social media. So we’re talking about Instagram, we’re talking about TikTok, we’re talking about Facebook, YouTube, and any other social media platform that people are on. And your vision was to activate these evangelists to go and share the gospel on these different platforms. So, so talk to me a little bit about what God has put on your heart in this area of raising up kingdom influencers for social media.
Frankie Cortez (10:21):
Yeah, it’s amazing. So the Lord kind of put this, um, desire on my heart to see people reached online. So there’s 8 billion people on the earth and 5.8 billion of those are internet users. About four, a little over 4.5 billion of those are social media users. So the biggest people group in the world are internet users. So it’s now how are we gonna actually use the internet to reach people for the kingdom of God, because that’s where the people are. Many times we want to reach people in, in the way that we’ve always done things and now we’re living in a generation and a time where maybe those things are, are not as effective as what as when, how it was long time ago or some of those things we can keep doing. But we can also add social media to that. So the Lord gave me a vision about going on social media and really sharing the gospel, but not just sharing the gospel, but raising up a team to share the gospel online as a unit and creating some type of alliance or some type of collaboration of a group of us to make our own individualistic channels, but then kind of come together, collaborate, give each other feedback so that we can be effective in reaching people on social media.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:26):
So God’s given you this vision to reach out on social media and, and I think this really is a, a vision that that comes from God because like you said, we need to go to where the people are. And so sometimes people think about missions as going on a missionary trip. You, you go over to Africa, people are in Africa, you go to Asia. But nowadays, so many people are spending so much time on social media. I have two kids, they love spending time on the screen. And so we have to limit how much screen time they have cuz they’ll just sit and scroll through different things and watch YouTube videos. And, and so as a parent, it’s kind of, it is kind of scary because who knows what they’re watching, but I think that Christians need to be a voice in those places where, where people are.
(12:13):
And, and so frequently you see people there spending time just watching videos on their pH their phone, and they’re, they’re listening to content and we have to go to where they are and then we have to present the, the gospel message. Now something that you said earlier really stood out to me. We were talking about how there are a lot of Christian influencers that talk about good Christian topics, but there’s very few people that preach the gospel. So talk to me about the difference between an influencer and someone who is intentionally trying to lead people to Jesus.
Frankie Cortez (12:51):
Yeah, so there, there’s many amazing Christian influencers out there. Um, um, many with very good doc and many with amazing heart. They’re reaching out to the church, they’re building up the saints, which is amazing. Keep doing that. But what I don’t, I don’t see many, um, influencers that are Christian that are actually going out to reach the loss. Specifically, I’m going to do social media because I want people to know Jesus. I want people to come to the place of repentance. I want people to come into I don’t know Christ, who I know Jesus now.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:22):
And so one of the things that the Christ for All nations Evangelism Bootcamp really does well is teaching people how to present the gospel. And so just give me a nutshell, what is the gospel, Frankie?
Frankie Cortez (13:37):
Yeah, so this is the gospel. Many times we, we, we know the gospel mentally, but we leave out some parts. So this is the gospel. Sin separates us from God. There’s no way we can get to God because of our sin. That’s the problem. But this is the answer. Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, came down to this earth lived life, look every single one of us, but was without sin. And you know, the, the religious people at the time, they hated him. They killed him, they mocked him, and they hung him on a cross. And Jesus died. But the story doesn’t end there. The Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead and now he’s alive and he’s living and he’s wanting to give us eternal life. Jesus prayed an ultimate price for us that we couldn’t pay ourselves. There’s nothing we can do to earn our salvation. But Jesus came, died, rose again to give us eternal life. And the Bible says, if we repent and believe the gospel, we can have eternal life today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:27):
Amen. Well, I hope if you’re listening, you don’t know Jesus right now, you’d cry out to Jesus and ask him to save you. And if you will call on Jesus, he will save you from every sin and give you a brand new start. All right, Frankie, let’s talk about some of the, the different platforms that are available for, for social media influencers and just kind of talk me through some of how people be effective on these different platforms. Cuz every platform has a slightly different nuance, different things that they’re looking for, different algorithms. And so let’s start with Instagram. How do you think someone could use Instagram to share the gospel?
Frankie Cortez (15:04):
Yeah, so Instagram seems to really want to be competing against TikTok right now with reels. Reels is what they’re pushing in the past, um, they pushed a lot of graphics, a lot of photos and stuff like that, but it seems like we’re in a place where they’re really pushing Instagram reels. And for those of you that don’t know what Instagram reels is, their short form videos just like TikTok, where you basically have 60 seconds or less to get your messes across. And if it’s anything longer than that, you lost them. And you have about five to 10 seconds in the beginning to grab their attention. And if you don’t grab their attention within five to 10 seconds, you’re pretty much gone. So it’s how do we effectively grab someone’s attention, the five to 10 seconds, and then keep their attention for the rest of the, the remaining time, which is 50 seconds longer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:44):
All right, so now let’s, you mentioned TikTok. Talk to me about TikTok. How can we reach people on TikTok?
Frankie Cortez (15:48):
So I think TikTok is honestly the greatest vi uh, social media. It’s just so as far as virality, it’s just so easy to go viral. What I, what I’ve seen when I’ve talked to major influencers, they, they tell me that if I post three times a day every single day for a month, you pretty much blow up. And TikTok is short form content just like Instagram reel. So everything needs to be under 60 seconds. You need to grab people’s attention within the first five to 10 seconds, and then you need to keep them for the rest of the 50 seconds.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:17):
Alright, give me a hook for a a TikTok video. If you want to tell someone about Jesus on TikTok, what is the first sentence that you’re gonna use to hook them? Gi Give me two or three hooks.
Frankie Cortez (16:29):
Just say something super crazy. Did you know that Jesus is not the Savior of the world? And you’d be like, what? That doesn’t make sense. And then you hooked him and then you kind of say, he’s not the savior of the world. If you don’t, if you don’t receive it, it’s like I give you a check. And if, and if you don’t actually cash the check, you don’t actually have salvation.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:45):
Yeah, that sounded like heresy there for a second. It did. It did. Oh, and, but it definitely got my attention. Okay. <laugh>, I was about ready. Kick you off the, the Evangelism podcast for heresy. Alright, so, so TikTok and then YouTube. Talk to me a little bit about who YouTube.
Frankie Cortez (17:01):
So YouTube is very interesting because they’re both long, there’s long form content, and they’re short form content. So YouTube actually started shorts, which they’re competing against Instagram reels and TikTok, but then they have the long form content and what they’re known for, which is amazing. So long form content is maybe 10 minutes of video. Short form content again is like 60 seconds. Now,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:22):
Who would you say is the most famous YouTuber right now,
Frankie Cortez (17:26):
Mr. Beast.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:28):
And what did Mr. Beast do in order to become famous on YouTube?
Frankie Cortez (17:34):
Yeah, so what Mr. Beast did is he looked up the algorithms. He, he really studied what worked, what didn’t work. He looked up what the people wanted, and as he looked up what the people wanted, he began to do trial and error. Okay, if I try this, let’s see if this works, because like statistically it should, but if it doesn’t, let’s kind of tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak. And then he just found his niche, he found his, his kind of vein, and he moved forward with it. And now he’s the greatest YouTuber out there right now.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:02):
And so you’re thinking about this from a, a gospel standpoint or an evangelistic standpoint. And what I really like about your idea of bringing together kingdom influencers is that by working together, we could replicate some of the success that Mr. Beast has had by doing the same thing in the, the kingdom realm. And so what he did, he had a group of friends, a mastermind group, and every day they would talk together, they would critique one another’s videos, they would see what was working, what wasn’t working, what was good at getting views. And he was obsessive about it, tweaking every single little video until it was perfect and looking for creative ideas, creative ways. He loves giving away money. And, and so what Mr. Beast saw is that his early videos didn’t get many views, but as he got better and better, they got more and more views. And so I think if we had a Christian Mastermind group, we could achieve amazing success and, and really catch the attention of people that need Jesus.
Frankie Cortez (19:12):
100%. And this is the point of the group that we created, is that we are creating a group where we can build each other up. We can kind of talk to each other, what worked, what didn’t work. We can kind of give constructive criticism for one another. We can say, this is what we think would reach the most amount of people. And it’s really thinking outside the box. It’s like, let’s do something that we haven’t done before. Let’s try to, you know, look outside of the box and maybe do some of the Mr. Beast type content, but bring it into the gospel and see people saved.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:38):
Hey. Amen. Well, if you’re interested in being part of a group of Christian influencers who are sharing the gospel, uh, reach out to us. Let me know, or, or you can contact, uh, Frankie, uh, what is your website if someone wants to donate to your ministry or find out more about you? Frankie, what, what’s your website?
Frankie Cortez (19:58):
Yeah, if you want to contact me, you can go to promises international.org. Again, promises international.org.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:05):
So I’d encourage you go support Frankie, help him go and preach the gospel around the world. And if you want to communicate the gospel on social media, I encourage you to start making videos. Start using your voice to reach out. Today’s generation is a sight and sound generation. They’re on all the social media, media platforms. So if we wanna reach them, we need to start thinking strategically about how to use social media to present the gospel. God bless you. And thank you so much, Frankie, for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Frankie Cortez (20:42):
Thank you for having me. Are
Evangelism Podcast Host (20:43):
You called by God to be an evangelist? Do you wanna lead millions of 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 given ultra call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you wanna 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 (21:44):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (23:05):
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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