Description: Macoby Donaldson is a radical soul winner who is willing to take risks in order to lead people to Jesus. Recently he went to the CHOP / CHAZ zone in Seattle, Washington to preach the Gospel in the midst of the turmoil that comes with racial injustice. As he faced danger (4 people were shot), he led several people to the Lord and also confronted demonic forces. Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach, interviews him on today’s podcast.
Website: www.macobydonaldson.com
Show Notes:
Do you remember when a group of radicals in Seattle, Washington took over part of the city to form their own Autonomous Zone known as CHAZ?
CHAZ (the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone) started on June 8, 2020 when the Seattle police department vacated the East Precinct building. Policemen fled the area. Later the name was changed to CHOP (the Capital Hill Organized Protest).
Many people in the media insisted it was a “peaceful protest.” But during the existence of CHOP, there were at least four shootings, two deaths, arson, and several sexual assaults.
Many of the people in at the CHOP were protesting because they wanted justice and an end to racism. Many of them were protesting because of genuine problems in our society. Mayor Jenny Durkan finally shut it down on July 1, 2020.
On the program today, Evangelist Macoby Donaldson tells about how he went with a team of evangelists to preach the Gospel in the midst of the chaos. Here are some of the questions he answers on today’s podcast:
* Was CHOP peaceful like the media was reporting?
* No police were allowed in the CHOP. Did you feel like you were in danger? Did you ever feel like your life was at risk?
* What response did you receive when you started telling people about Jesus?
* Did you see anyone who was demon possessed when you were ministering? What did you do?
* What do you think is the solution to all the problems like racism and economic inequality that the people of CHOP were protesting about?
Key Idea from Macoby Donaldson: “The light of Christ shines brightest in the darkness.”
Transcription
Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Today we have with us a special guest Macoby Donaldson. He’s a radical soul winner who is willing to take risks in order to lead people to Jesus. Thank you for coming on.
Macoby Donaldson (00:11):
Yes. Thank you, Dr. King, for having me, it’s such a privilege to be on your podcast.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:15):
And then just a minute, I’m going to ask him to share with us how he went to one of the most dangerous mission fields here in America. But first I want to say welcome to Coby. It’s great to have you with me today. Well, where did we meet?
Macoby Donaldson (00:29):
We met because I recently went through the Christ for All Nations (CFAN) Evangelism Bootcamp and you were one of our instructors there at the bootcamp.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:35):
And so what are some of the things that you learned?
Macoby Donaldson (00:38):
Well, we learned, we learned a lot of things, but it was focused on mass crusade, evangelism, leading manny, many people to Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:44):
And so honestly, if you went to a school like that, you feel like you’re called to be an evangelist. Tell me about how you discovered your calling,
Macoby Donaldson (00:52):
You know, the AngelList. Yeah, absolutely. I didn’t grow up around people that were evangelistic. And so I thought I was kind of just supposed to be a street minister. I thought that was kind of the only that’s all evangelism was. Yeah.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:02):
Yeah. The picture of the guy on the street corner with a mega phone and say, y’all got it. Hell, you’re going to die.
Macoby Donaldson (01:08):
That’s about it. That’s about ad. But the Lord told me to go to this crest, correlations, evangelists of bootcamp and it opened my eyes to what evangelism can be. And it just, it lit on fire. I don’t let Betty people on fire for mass crusade evangelism.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:23):
So tell me, what did you learn at the bootcamp that did your picture of what an evangelist is? Shift some? Yeah,
Macoby Donaldson (01:30):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we learned so much, we had many, many instructors and ed courses classes every day. One of the things I learned the most is just how hard work and determination is one of the key factors that evangelism, if you want to be someone that leads people to Jesus throughout your whole life hard work and being dedicated to this is probably the most important thing you can do.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:51):
So did you get a megaphone? Are you going out on the street corner and using a megaphone to preach? Now
Macoby Donaldson (01:56):
We have done that sometimes not exclusively, but yeah, we’ve been open air preaching at Walmart and at grocery stores and things
Evangelist Daniel King (02:04):
And, and, and when you’re, you’re going out preaching, what’s your message. What are you telling people?
Macoby Donaldson (02:08):
Our message is usually based around a scripture. So we will pick a scripture. Maybe it’s John three 16 for God. So loved the world. He gave his only begotten son that, you know, anyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. And we will just create a little 32nd message. You know, Jesus loves you so much that he died to pay the price for your sins. You know, it’s it says there’s either believer there’s perish. There’s not a third option. It’s it’s option one believer option two parish. I want everybody here to be able to say they believe so you can be with me in heaven and we’ll just create a 32nd one minute message and we’ll preach.
Evangelist Daniel King (02:40):
Wow. That’s amazing. Now, since you graduated from bootcamp where I had the privilege of instructing you and talking to you about how to preach the gospel, you went to one of the most dangerous mission fields there is. And it was actually right here in America, in the Pacific Northwest, which is a huge on tapped mission field right here in America to the city of Seattle. And if you’ve been listening to the news lately, you might remember that in Seattle, there, there was recently a bunch of unrest and they, they shut off a portion of the city from the police and they called it at first, they call it Chaz, C H a Z, which stood for the Capitol Hill autonomous zone. Then they changed the name. Everyone was making fun of them because Chaz sounds funny like, Hey, your arm from Chaz. And they thought that sounded kind of lame.
Evangelist Daniel King (03:37):
And so they changed the name to chop Capitol Hill organized protest. So I guess chop like karate chops that a little bit more manly than hi, we’re from Chaz. It’s a little tougher. And so that this whole thing started on June 8th when the Seattle police department vacated the East precinct building and they shut off a several block area in Seattle and put up walls and said that police aren’t even allowed to go into this area. And during the time that they did this, there were at least four shootings to people who died. There was lots of arson and several alleged sexual assaults. And so when you, you actually went there during the midst of all this to tell people about Jesus, why would you do that?
Macoby Donaldson (04:25):
Well one of my buddies actually felt like the Lord had, had showed him this, you know, Chaz chop area. And he called me and he said, Hey, let’s go, let’s go shine. The light of Jesus to this dark place. And so we went we bought plane tickets later that day and we just kinda went went to Chaz and we began to scout it out and see how
Evangelist Daniel King (04:45):
We could minister there. So you just went online, bought a plane ticket, flew there, and you went to Chaz. How did you get in? Did, did you see people with guns? Were there people with guns, keeping some people out?
Macoby Donaldson (04:58):
There were people with guns by the time we got there it was already very organized and, and from what I understand Antifa had left and Antifa is the more militant of the two groups. So black lives matter was the reigning organizer of chop. By the time we got.
Evangelist Daniel King (05:16):
And so on the news, I saw a lot of people that kept insisting that it was a peaceful protest. When you were there, did it look peaceful to you?
Macoby Donaldson (05:26):
No. There was a, there’s nothing peaceful about it. It was many more people that died. I mean as far as I know, we we’ve heard stories of many more people dying than whatever made it onto the news. Even people that they took their bodies and they left, you know there was blood on that we saw in the morning after somebody died blood all over the seabed where somebody had been shot. So you actually saw blood from people that had died yeah. The night before.
Evangelist Daniel King (05:51):
Wow. And so you’re going there to witness and that puts a certain urgency to witnessing when, when you know that literally are dying and they, if they don’t know Jesus, they could end up in hell for all of eternity. So, absolutely. Wow. And so when you started telling people about Jesus, that’s kind of, what response did you get? What was your strategy for witnessing and chop?
Macoby Donaldson (06:15):
I had the privilege of being there one day early from the time our group got there. So I actually got to scout it out the night before we all got there. They were, everybody was getting there the morning. I think it was a a Wednesday morning. I got there Tuesday night. And so I went into chop at night and just kind of scouted it out. And there were, I was actually with a Christian group, another friend of mine was there a local group. They were trying to bless people with worship and ice cream. And they got kicked out because they were being very kind of intrusive and very like just open about, Hey, we’re we love Jesus. We want to bless you guys. And that turned the, the leaders of the black lives matter movement off because they want, if you were white, they only want you in there to receive and learn. They don’t want you preaching any message. Cause you know, they would say, we’ve been listening to you for 400 years. It’s time for you to listen to us.
Evangelist Daniel King (07:04):
And, and so you saw other Christians that went in there and were, were trying to do ministry and they ended up getting kicked out. Yeah. Did, did you get kicked out?
Macoby Donaldson (07:15):
So no, we never got kicked out. So the Lord gave us a strategy. It was a blessing. It was kind of like Joshua and the spies Joshua when they went into the promised land, they were able to spy it out. So I went Tuesday night and we spied out and we came up with strategy. So we just got food. We got a tent, we partnered with some local churches and some local groups. We got a truck two pallets full of food. And we just had a girl going all day long with hotdogs and burgers on the grill. And we were just serving people all day long. The first day we hardly did any real ministry. We just talked to the leaders at chop. We said, Hey, we want to set up a tent. We just want to feed you. And the second day we took another step and we started praying people on the third day, I was even able to during the black lives matter organized forum, which is where they all come together and they come with artists.
Macoby Donaldson (07:58):
I was actually able to get up and share a scripture from Martin Luther King’s speech. I have a dream it’s actually a scripture that he shared in that speech. And we wrote a pray for peace. So is, it is an amazing time. There was nothing peaceful about what they were, what was going on there, but we were able to come in and kind of gradually step forward evangelism and over 60 people ended up getting saved. And so how long were you there for we’re there for four days, four days. And over those four days,
Evangelist Daniel King (08:25):
60 people gave their lives to Jesus. The angels in heaven are rejoicing when only one center gets saved. So they’re throwing quite a party that 60 people gave their lives to Jesus. Now, now tell me some of the, the, the, the challenges that people there were facing. Cause I understand it wasn’t, it wasn’t just one group. There was lots of homeless people that showed up and tell me some of what you saw.
Macoby Donaldson (08:49):
Yeah, there was a lot of drugs. I would say the most prevalent for me the shocking thing was as almost every other person was high, just whacked out on drugs. Of course there’s no police, so you can do whatever you want. The only thing that’s going to happen to you is you might get in a fight or you might get killed, I guess is the ultimate. But most people were on drugs. They’re very prevalent there’s needles. We saw needles, we saw all kinds of drugs and that was the most prevalent thing. A lot of homeless people, a lot of like hippies what I would consider it to be. It’s almost like it was a Woodstock kind of a thing. And then people that are very passionate about the social, social justice aspect against police brutality and also the black lives matter core kind of movement.
Evangelist Daniel King (09:31):
So there are lots of different people and lots of different agendas. And, and what was some of the response from some of the people that you witnessed too? How did people respond?
Macoby Donaldson (09:41):
We found I feel like there was a pretty good pretty good mix, but it was, there was not in the middle. It was either very positive or very negative. And you, you know, you probably heard the term, the light shines brightest in the darkness, the darkest darkness. And we really found that to be true with our experience at chop, there was a lot of darkness, a lot of violence, people were getting raped. Allegedly. I think a lot of people ended up losing their life. People, there was a fist fight, every five or 10 minutes, you know, people touching girls and beat them up or all kinds of stuff. Did you ever get in a fist fight? We got really close to one. I actually got in a mix once, but I never liked throw any punches or anything, but I was trying to protect this, this girl who was getting beat up, like beat a bat by other girls. I was just trying to protect her. You know,
Evangelist Daniel King (10:27):
Now I heard that no police were allowed to go in. So did you ever feel like you were in danger? Did you feel like your life was at risk?
Macoby Donaldson (10:37):
I was, I actually had a kind of a dialogue with the Lord before I went and I really feel like he said I need you to be willing and ready to sacrifice for me when I get there. I assumed beforehand that cause I had heard that it was this big, scary place with everybody was dying. And that wasn’t the case I had never really felt scared for my life. While I was in there. I really I knew it was a possibility we could die, but I really, it was, it was more about the strategy he gave us. I need you to die to your vision of what this is going to look like, take it my route. We went slowly. First day we fed people and we kind of took a step. Every, that we gained favor with the leaders of black lives matter and we were able to infiltrate the group at and even love all the leaders pray for that. We watched one of the leaders feat and her life has changed. And so it was a different kind of sacrifice. So in a way, you know, we did have the sacrifice, what we thought the trip was going to look like, but I never felt like I was close to death, I would say.
Evangelist Daniel King (11:33):
And then mayor, Jenny Durkin finally shut it down on July 1st. Some of the protesters even came to her house and I think she got freaked out about that. And like, we, we let’s put a stop to the protesting. And many of the people that were in chop were we’re really protesting
Macoby Donaldson (11:54):
Because of, of genuine issues that they feel are in our society. They, they want justice. They want an into, to racism, which I hope that all of us want to see justice. We all want to see an into, to racism. And so they’re protesting because of genuine problems in our society. What do you think is the solution to these problems that we face in our society? You know, it’s interesting because there were, there were many great people there. You know, some of the people are just are hurt and they, their ideas are skewed, but there are many great people, but even the people that had real passion for equality and justice they could never get on the same page. They were always fighting. Even the black lives matter movement. One lady would get up and say, we need healthcare. If we had mental health care, if we had universal healthcare, this problem would be this way because of this, this and this.
Macoby Donaldson (12:47):
And then somebody else would get up there and say, no, it’s because of education. If the education was different, it’d be like this. And they would fight and they would shout both people had megaphones and they would shout over each other. It was just chaos. And it was just very clear that all the enemy does is he, he brings confusion. He brings chaos. And the answer, the only answer is Jesus Christ. Our surrender to Jesus Christ, his plan, his way, his will. That is the only thing that will bring peace and justice into the world. And so how can we bring Jesus to people? We just, we share him, we share the love of Jesus. You know, you can tell your testimony before Jesus, you know, I was addicted to alcohol, I was addicted to pornography. I had an encounter with God where I met the Holy spirit face to face, and he told me he wanted to be my friend.
Macoby Donaldson (13:29):
And we began our friendship on that day. I surrendered my life to Jesus. I turned from my sin and afterwards I’ve got purpose in my life. I’m not addicted to sin and I just feel free. And I feel amazing. I want everybody, I come in contact with to have that kind of, that kind of the, at least the option to be free, to have purpose for their life. So tell me two stories. I want you to tell me two stories. I want you to tell me one story of someone that you tried to minister to, and it went really horribly. Yeah. And then I want you to tell me another story of someone you minister to, and you had a tremendous outcome. Yeah, absolutely. The one I’ll start with the bad one on a good note, but there was this young man who Marcy actually, his name is Marcellus.
Macoby Donaldson (14:11):
I remember his name. He he came to us, we had been doing this for four days. And on the last day we were feeding people. We were praying and it was kind of like winding down to the police. We knew that the police were coming to tear it down. So some people were leaving. Some of the tents were leaving. So we were the only people serving food. So they came to us and this young man Marcellus came to us and he said, Hey, I want to be baptized. Cause we had a water tank, a boat and we were baptizing people with water. And we we asked him all these questions. Do you believe Jesus is a son of God? Cause we hadn’t had conversations beforehand. He just kind of saw us doing what we were doing. And he kind of initiated the conversation and I asked him, you know, do you believe Jesus is the only son of God?
Macoby Donaldson (14:51):
Are you ready to give your whole life? You know, and all these questions. And and he said, yes. Are you ready to turn from your sin? You know? Yes. And so I baptized him and water and we prayed that we prayed the Holy spirit would fill him up. And 30 minutes later he comes back and he’s got a sign and he made a cardboard sign, but it’s, he’s talking to the third person about himself that he says, who baptized this boy, I did not give you permission to baptize this boy. And he had a red Rose and he threw a single red Rose in the baptism tank and then he walks off.
Evangelist Daniel King (15:24):
So he was speaking in the third person. What do you think was going on?
Macoby Donaldson (15:28):
There was a David speaking to us through his voice, his voice and saying, who baptized this boy, I didn’t give you permission to baptize this boy. And he threw a single red Rose in the baptism tank and he left. Wow. So that went pretty horribly.
Evangelist Daniel King (15:43):
Did you try to cast out the dad or
Macoby Donaldson (15:45):
We, we, we ran after him. I had to run through town to find him and we found him and prayed for him. There wasn’t any strong manifestation. He seemed like very double-minded like it was tough. I think he was on drugs and it was just tough. And I honestly, I don’t know what happened.
Evangelist Daniel King (16:02):
Well, we’ll, we’ll have to pray for him. Pray for myself. Yeah. I know. God loves him and has a great plan for his life. And Jesus is more powerful than any demons. So I pray that Jesus will capture Marcellus and set him free from this demonic attack, from the pits of hell and release him into God’s calling on his life. Amen. Okay. Now give me a good story. What, what was something really amazing that happened?
Macoby Donaldson (16:30):
I love this story because it really portrays a scripture that I love really beautifully. And it’s Romans two chapter four. It says that the kindness of God is meant to lead us to repentance, but to lead men to repentance. And so there’s this man who had a seizure in the morning time. And he, he had fallen. I think he’d fallen at a curb. He said, and his back was terribly injured from the seizure. So he went to the hospital and the ambulance and and he came back in the afternoon to the park where we were and he was eating some of the food we were providing. And and I said, you know, do you have any pain in your body? He said, yeah. He told me what happened with his seizure. So I prayed for his mind, but also his back was terribly, terribly injured.
Macoby Donaldson (17:05):
He, his shoulders were kind of up and he couldn’t move his back. He couldn’t like do this. He couldn’t bend over his back was extremely stiff from the fall when he had the seizure and we prayed and in Jesus name, we pray prayed and he got healed. The back pain left. He had movement in his back and it was an amazing healing. It was a very, very miraculous healing that we could see the effect of it. And I asked him, I said, man, this is proof that Jesus loves you. You know, he died not only to pay for your sickness, but also to pay for your sin. And the wages of sin is death. And we did the evangelism thing and he, he very genuinely said just, I don’t know that I’m ready to give my life to Jesus right now today.
Macoby Donaldson (17:43):
And I pushed a little harder, but I, I, I didn’t push you on, cause I really appreciate it. It seemed like he was really thinking, really trying to figure things out. So I blessed him and I said, man, he loves you so much. And I pray that his love chases you every day he left. But the basic thing is that he came back two hours later and he said, you know, I thought that whatever I said no to living my life for Jesus, that he would take the healing away, but the healing remained my back still feels great. I don’t have any pain in my back whatsoever. And so I think I want to get baptized. I want to give my life to Jesus. And so immediately we baptized him in water. He gave his life to Jesus. He repetitive his sins. He baptized him and it was a beautiful, beautiful picture of God’s goodness, leading people to repentance. Wow. That’s a tremendous story.
Evangelist Daniel King (18:26):
Yeah. Do you have one more amazing story of what God does?
Macoby Donaldson (18:28):
This is, this might be the most intense intense moment of my life whenever this happened, but we were walking home after it was dark and that we heard a madman yelling just nonsense and vulgar stuff from a rooftop. And we were yelling back at him, you know, Jesus loves you. And he, he said, if you really love me, come up here and give me a hug. And so we found a way up there. We ran up there, we were just administered two 11 on him. He was high on cocaine. He had the bag with him right there. And it was, it was a wild thing. He was saying vulgar things. And he was kind of rapping and doing like a rap kind of thing. And we just, he was all, he was going on for five, 10 minutes and we just stopped. And he said, Hey, just put your hands up and say Jesus.
Macoby Donaldson (19:11):
And we started administering to him and we he started manifesting demons and he started growling and, and, you know, kind of doing that thing where it’s like demonic tongues, and it’s really nasty. And we had a breakthrough and he fell over on the ground. This is a man high on cocaine yelling, cuss words, talking about vulgar sexual things. And he, he, he falls, he feels the power of God. He falls back on his, back in the parking garage on on the roof of a parking garage. And he gets delivered of demons. And then we pray for the whisper and he starts speaking in tongues, new tongues, Holy tugs. And then immediately after that, he actually falls asleep on the floor of a parking garage on the, on the roof of a parking garage. And he falls asleep and he’s asleep for like a few minutes.
Macoby Donaldson (19:54):
And we had to decide like, are we going to stay here and wait for him to wake up? Oh, how long is he going to be sleeping? And we, we figured that he probably hadn’t had any peace in his mind for several days. And so that’s why he was tired. He, he, he got peace with God and and he, he was able to rest. So, but it was amazing, sorry, there’s amazing transformation. He was being very vulgar and cussing and very, you know, just very worldly. And he had a counter guy, he got delivered, he got saved. He gave his life to Jesus. He got set free, filled with the spirit. He came up and he was like talking about scripture. He wasn’t cussing anymore. So it’s an amazing transformation. Wow,
Evangelist Daniel King (20:32):
Tremendous. Yeah. I’m so proud of you and going into the darkest places and preaching the gospel. Congratulations on seeing such tremendous fruit there. I think it’s really amazing that God can take someone like you and use you to do amazing things for his kingdom. And so, congratulations. I think your boldness is commendable to go to the darkest place and to be a shining light in the midst of great darkness. Thank you so much for listening to the evangelism podcast, where our goal is every soul. God bless you.
