What is the process for setting up a crusade? How long does it take to organize a crusade? What are the vital phases of crusade organization? On today’s Evangelism Podcast, I speak with Pastor Mike from Zambia. He has just finished organizing a successful crusade in Gandajika, Congo. If you want to learn how to organize a crusade, today’s episode is for you.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Pastor Mike Kasonde.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:10):
Oh yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:11):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:13):
Thank you very much, evangelist. I’m so excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:16):
It is very special being here with you. We are in the city of Ngandajika, Democratic Republic of Congo, and you have been living here since last February as a crusade director for the Crusade, which we have done here this week, and we have seen God do amazing things. Tell me what excited you about what you saw God do this week.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:45):
Wow, wow, wow. I think first and foremost, it was really, really an honor to have you come as a guest evangelist to Gica and just how God uses you, especially when it comes to delivering the gospel. It was more than I expected to see. I’ve been in different crusades, but this one I really want to really, really keen into one particular thing, the delivery of the gospel, how people receive the gospel, how connected they were, and we could see instant transformation. I would set an example when you did the children’s crusade, how before that, how the children were so they could move around. They were so

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:41):
Yeah. One night the kids were at the front, they were pushing, they were fighting and the people from the back were pushing them and it actually was a little dangerous. It looked like in a moment, very, very dangerous. It could all get out of control. But then we did the children’s Festival Festival and the demeanor of the children completely changed. Exactly.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (02:01):
It completely changed. And when they came in the afternoon for the bigger crusade, they were calm. They were just there enjoying what was happening. And of course, talking about the great miracles that God did, healing the people, especially the brother who had an injury in his chest because he had an accident of the motorbike.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:23):
Yeah, he was driving down the road on his motorbike. He hit a hole in the road and it threw him off the bike. He hit his chest and for one year he had trouble breathing. One

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (02:32):
Year he had trouble breathing and you could even tell the excitement after God touched him. And also not forgetting the fire conference man, when you did that, the pastors rejoiced the bishops. It’s something that they’ve never experienced, where pastors come together and experience the move of the Holy Spirit filled with the Holy Spirit where we could see people speaking another tongues. And in the evening you did the same on the crusade. I saw this guy sl under the Holy Spirit speaking in new tongues. So God has really, really did wonderful things on the field. I’m super excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:17):
So you are working with Christ for All nations. Yes. Tell me, where did you first get connected to CAM?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (03:24):
Alright, so way back in 2022, CA came to Zambia to do five crusades. They plan to do 10, but because of one or two things, they scheduled for five. So now our city was among the five that they concluded.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:41):
In which city were you in?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (03:42):
That was in Zambia, the city called soi, the north part of Zambia. So the city called soi, that’s where I’m coming from. So Chan came, did a crusade. I was just the vice, I mean the secretary for the youth committee because they have different committees. So I was helping out as a secretary in the youth committee, and I remember working, just gave myself to just work to see people saved. And after that I joined the protocol team during the crusade so I could ritually get on the field early leave. I would be the last person to leave the Sade field because I needed to make sure that everything is done, the evangelists are well taken care of, and they leave the field and everything is done. So from there now Chan came back to Zambia last year. They wanted to do do 10 crusades. They ended up doing 11 crusades.

(04:50):
So they were looking for local people whom they saw really had put in, sacrificed, like they really worked. So they were getting recommendations from the five cities prior to that year, last year where they did those crusade. So they were getting recommendation for local people who will be trained by C fund and they work as managers, which means that last year they had a director and the director had a manager. So they were looking for 10 people. And by God’s grace I was picked to be one of the 10 people they were looking for to work as a manager. So it was last year that I was fully, fully direct connected. I worked as a manager where I was helping the director. When the director is away, I was literally doing anything. And my director last year had two cities, one big city and a smaller city.

(05:55):
So we were two managers under him. So he took this other manager to the big city because it had a lot of concentration. Then this smaller city said, Mike, I want you to manage this ritually directed. So he just gave me what to do. He gave me what to do. So basically I could give him reports where I got stuck, I could call him, hear from him. So I literally directed and managed the crusade. So from there it is where Chan saw something and they asked me if I am willing to help in different crusades because of the outcome. Then we did the fire camp with them. So I’m a graduate for fire camp, which they did last year.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:44):
And so you were chosen to come here to Ngandajika you came in the month of February. Exactly. And now it is August. So you’ve been here for a long time. Many months. You’ve been working very hard. And first I want to say thank you so much for your hard work. I know that it is not easy to organize an event like this. There are many challenges, but I’m very grateful for you because you have done a good job. You can always tell the first night if the manager, the director, has done a good job because the number of people that come the first night is up to the organization, the posters, the flyers, everybody knowing about it. And then I always tell the crusade director, how many people come the second night is up to the preacher. If the preacher preaches good, then many people will come the second night after that, it is in the hands of the preacher, but the first night is in your hands. And every night here we have just seen God do amazing things. So tell me a little bit about the process each month, what were you doing to prepare for it? So you got here in February, what was the first thing you did?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (07:56):
Alright, so the first thing we did is to scout the place, like go around the place, be familiar with the city. Then you do a Google mapping of all the churches. You ritually go around, you try to map the churches. How many churches are there? So the first thing we do is you do that. Then you must make sure that you find a hotel, a place to live. That’s the first thing you really want to do. So when you are settled, then you create a relationship with the big fathers of the city. So you literally ask around how many fathers are here? So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:34):
You went and met with them, you ate with them, you became friends with them, and you began to share the vision of doing a crusade. Yeah.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (08:44):
So when you meet those fathers, then you organize a meeting for them, and then the senior director who is Voer would come to the city and Mr. Brett probably, if he’s around, they’ll come to the city to meet these fathers. So that they’ll be the one really just emphasize on what already you’ve been talking to them about. So they really emphasize about the vision of C fund. They really need to ask them from a personal level, do you really want the crusade here? And then it is from their response and their involvement that the crusade will be chosen

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:24):
To you either say yes or no for the city.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:26):
Exactly. Exactly. So once,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:28):
If there’s disunity among the pastors, I think you shake the dust off your feet like Jesus said, and go find a city that really is ready for a move of God. But thank God this city said yes, yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:39):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:40):
The bishop was ready,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:41):
So excited. The fathers were so excited. So when we did that, then we had to break. Then we had to come back again for the second phase. Now the second phase is where now you need to run because now the BOA, the board of advisors who are the fathers of the city, they needed to give us the person we call the ECC executive committee chair person. So the executive committee chairperson needs to have his vice. So there are two people, these people are pastors. You want to choose a pastor who is young, not like a bishop, a young pastor, but well respected, well connected and has got influenced over the pastors and over the city. So when the bureau, the board of advisor gives you that person, that is the person we call the engine of the crusade because he’s the one now that needs to supervise different committees. So the first two committees that we start with is the prayer committee like Evangelist Rena Bon always said one leg preaching the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:49):
Phe,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (10:50):
One leg prayer. And we have a successful crusade. So you have the prayer committee, which consists of 10 or five to 10 people. So now when you have that prayer committee, they need to begin to pray for the crusade. They need to begin to pray for churches. Then the important committee that you form immediately is the church mobilization committee. So remember in the first time you did the scouting and mapping of churches, so you have an idea. But now these people comes to give you now the reality of what is on the ground, how many churches are on the ground. So you have 10 people in that committee. So those are the people who go around the city to ritually mark the churches. They get the phone number for the pastor, they get the name of the church, and at least they get an approximation of how many people are in that church.

(11:45):
But what we’d want them to do is to get all the churches, small, big, large, all the churches in the villages. So you work like with them just marking the church, marking the church. Then when they bring these churches together, then we do now what we call planning for the FTM, which is the all pastors meeting, where now we need to bring these pastors together in one big place and so that we can sell the vision to all the pastors. So these two committees are very critical in the second phase as you’re preparing the crusade. So when they bring the contact of pastors, you now come up with what we call a call center. So the same committee begins to call the pastors the same committee. You come up with letters like letters, invitation letters to the A PM. So they need to go to give letters they need

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:46):
To find And do they take them by hand to each church and deliver them to the pastors?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (12:51):
Yes. So you divide the city in zones like this. JI was divided in four zones. So we had kaban, kaban, jiji and Luga commune, we call them zones. So you divide these guys into each zones. So this person maybe let’s say three of them in one zone. So they’ll ritually go and hand over the pastors in that zone, the invitation letters. Then you do calls. Then we do bulk SMSs where you send messages to these pastors, the invitation for the A PM, then I did radio. You need to go to radios to make an announcement. All the pastors, we are calling you to this important A PM. So now when the pastors come for the A PM, that’s when it’s like now the crusade begins to run. Now the executive director comes, the senior director comes and all top C fund officials, they come to meet these pastors. They sell the vision to them. And what do in that all pastors meeting, we ritually give them testimonies of their past crusades that we’ve done. And then we encourage them about volunteers, about counselors. We tell them we need your counselors, we need your,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:15):
How many counselors did we have trained for this crusade?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:18):
Alright, so registered counselors, we had 8,000. Then I did training for those counselors. I did 4,000. I trained like 4,000 because the other 4,000 actually discovered that they were counselors from the far villages.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:37):
So they didn’t know if they could make it.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:39):
Exactly. So in the A PM, the old pastors meeting, we discovered that 40% of the pastors came from these villages around because the radio message could reach them. So they had to come

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:55):
Do people from those villages, are they coming to the crusade? Yes, yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:58):
Yes, yes. I had one lady give the testimony, I can’t just remember the testimony that she gave. She said she literally came from one of the five villages. She literally came from there. So we trained counselors. So we encourage the pastors to give us volunteers. And so what follows after the all pastors meeting is now to begin to run with the volunteers committee to go and get now the names of these counselors, they begin to call pastors or we want names. So what I did is that before we can push the pastors to give you counselors, we needed the pastors to give us two key leaders in their church. These are the people we trained as captains and we trained about 400 captains. And this time around CfAN had introduced a very wonderful thing. They gave them certificates. So if you’re trained as a captain, we give you a CfAN certificate signed by Daniel Kolenda.

(16:02):
So to them it was like an owner, they felt this, they bought into the vision. So when we train those two people, those people are very key because they’re the ones who will give you volunteers from their church. The pastor is busy, can’t start writing down names. So those two are the point of contact to that church. So they’ll give you counselors, they’ll give you volunteers, and then after that is done, you think of forming. Now the different committees. So the committees we have apart from the prayer committee, church mobilization volunteers committee, we have what we call the youth committee, youth promo committee. We have the women’s promo committee, then we have the promo committee itself to help us to do the promotion and everything.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:54):
That’s putting up all the posters. Exactly, the banners, the billboards.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (16:58):
Exactly.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:59):
When do you put those out at what point?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (17:02):
Third phase. So the third phase is for promo. So when you have those committees and you have all the committees put together, then you need to look now at the promo budget. So now Chan will tell you, okay, we are doing prints from this company, the poster, this is the prints that we are doing. So when C fund gives you the budget, then as a director you really want to sit. You look at the city, how many banners do I want? Should I go for three by four? Should I go for two by one? Should I go for posters? So you have to really sit down and have plan for the city

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:46):
And to know where you’re going to put the publicity.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (17:48):
Exactly,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:48):
Exactly. And so do you remember the numbers for ganja dica? I’ve seen posters everywhere. I mean even in front of the hotel where we are, there’s a wall and there are hundreds of posters on the wall covering the entire wall. So the whole wall is yellow? Yes. And I think this is very good. Instead of just putting one poster on the wall, you make the wall into a billboard and then if someone tears down one, they cannot tear down all.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (18:18):
And the idea behind that is also to attract people. Because from a father looking at this, what’s that? What’s the So they really want to look at it. So got gca, if I can remember very well, we had about 40,000 posters. Then I had ordered for 252 by one. Then I had 53 by two. Yeah, I mean one 50. And then I had 24 by three the big ones. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:56):
Well you have done a good job when you come into the city, you cannot miss it. So there’s a lot of anticipation. You also go on the radio and you’re telling people and you’re running radio advertisements. Yes. And so is there one station or many stations?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:12):
Okay, so in Gand, GCA is three station. We’ve got the main one in the second, then the third. So you pay for all those radios. So in this city they did 28 jingles per day for three weeks.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:27):
Wow. So how much would one jingle cost?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:30):
Okay, so one jingle would cost probably a dollar. But because you’re paying for a long

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:36):
Time, you negotiate for a good deal, you negotiate for a

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:38):
Good deal.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:39):
So you’re running all day long. Yes, they play a song, then they play your jingle. So it’s like

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:44):
Every after one hour at

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:46):
The radio, everyone knows

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:48):
The jingle plays in all the three radio stations and it runs for three weeks. From the three weeks before the day of the crusade. And you do interviews also at the radio.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:02):
How long before the crusade do you start to train the counselors?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (20:05):
Alright, so we do three weeks before the crusade. Then we also do a second training two weeks before the crusade.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:15):
And the counselors have books. The books for the adults are given to the adults and they capture their name. And then we also have books for the children as well. And so how are the counselors trained? What are they told to do?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (20:31):
Okay, so the counselors, they’re told about field logistics where we tell them ritually what the field looks like, what happens on the field, when do the evangelists come on the podium to preach? Then the most important thing is about on how to use the book. So we tell them this is what we do. There are three important things you don’t want to miss in that sleep. So we show them the name. You need the phone number, which is the most important thing because your pastor need to do a follow up.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:07):
And so the name and the phone number is used to follow up on the new believers? Yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (21:10):
Exactly. Exactly. So the phone number and the address. And then when they do that, then they have to take off that slip and they give the book to this person. They keep that slip, but the slip is also divided into two. The lower part is just the signature and the date. So that is for chan to do the counting. Then that which has got the name, phone number and address goes to the pastor so that the pastor comes up with a committee because we also train the pastors to do follow up. So they come up with a committee so that they can begin to call those names.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:54):
Well you’ve done a wonderful job through all this process. I know there’s so many details, but you have worked very hard and I can see that your work has been successful. Amen. And tell me what have you thought about the crusade? Are you happy with the results that we’ve

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:11):
Seen? I’m so excited. I’m super excited. The second day I literally wept. I was on the stage, then I went behind looking at the people, looking at how they were involved just to receive Jesus Christ. It is so emotional. You like

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:30):
Even people crying, being touched by Jesus.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:34):
Yes. So you saw that, okay, thank God that God that to use me to put in my effort. And this is more than we expected. So I’ve been super happy, super excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:47):
And would you say that Congo is more difficult than Zambia for organizing?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:53):
It’s more, it’s like triple difficult.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:55):
Triple difficult. Yeah.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:57):
It’s like Congo is.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:59):
What are some of the challenges of organizing? What have been the biggest challenges that you faced?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (23:04):
Logistics. Things are super expensive.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:09):
The roads are not good. The roads are not good. So if you buy anything, it must come from far away. Exactly. Over bad roads.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (23:17):
Exactly. And here, inand gca, you discover that they don’t have a lot of stuff. So you want to get them from Bji Ma. And you could literally go with a bike on the bike. You are five hours on the bike with this road full of sand. It has not been easy. It has not been easy. Congo has not been easy. And people ritually.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:46):
Now this is the first time anyone’s ever done a crusade in this city. And because of that there is lots of excitement. But there are also some very significant spiritual challenges here. And each night we’ve been praying to break every curse. Yes. As you’ve been living here, you have learned about some of the spiritual needs of the city of Ganja dca. What are the needs of the people here?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (24:14):
Alright, so two needs. I’ll talk about the most. One lack of development. The city needs development. This city needs just God to make a way. There’s this too much of lack of development, poverty

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:30):
That will come tonight is blessing night. Exactly. We’re going to pray for a blessing on Ika. And when the blessing of God comes, God will elevate the prosperity of the city. Exactly.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (24:44):
But the other thing is the premature death of young children. When I came to this city, it is my first time to see small coffins like carpenters are ritually, making small coffins to sell out. And you’d see when you’re going in the roads, those small coffins, actually they are more than bigger coffees. So that would tell that they usually have these deaths for young children.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:16):
And so there’s a very high childhood mortality rate here.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (25:20):
Mortality rate is very high. So I asked the pastors about that. They said, yeah, the child mortality is that high. It’s like every week they have to bury a child.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:33):
Wow. Well, we broke the curse of childhood mortality. And I believe that Jesus is working here. We did the children’s festival, which was something I thought the pastors found very interesting because they saw us minister to the children. And I believe that as they minister to the children, that we will see many children get saved here in the city. And I also believe that as prosperity comes, the childhood mortality rate will go down. A crusade like this brings God’s blessing upon the entire region. And so I think this will have a significant impact on ganja dika for many years to come. Definitely. So Pastor Mike, I want to say thank you so much for your work. Thank you. Thank you. You have been a great blessing. I am very honored to work together with you. I know that the crusade does not just happen because of the preacher.

(26:31):
There is a lot of work that it must be done. It’s like an iceberg out in the Arctic Ocean. A small bit of the iceberg can be seen above the water, but under the water there is so much. And so in the months you’ve been here, you have put so much work into the crusade. But we have seen God honor your work. Thank you. And it is an honor to serve God with you. And I want to say thank you. And I hope that we can work together again to do more Crusades. Yes. Let’s go for it. Let’s bring all of Africa to Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. And thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast. Thank you very much.

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