1 877-431-4276Forging a New Generation of Evangelists | Charlie Marq
Charlie Marq is from the ministry Forge. Today we discuss their work in equipping evangelists and everyday believers to share their faith and engage in missions work, particularly in reaching unreached people groups.
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, Charlie Mark, from a ministry called Forge. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Charlie Marq – Forge (00:13):
Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here with you. So appreciate it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:16):
We are here in Zimbabwe together, we just met and it’s really been a lot of fun, ministering together. We’ve been out on the gospel
(00:27):
Truck for a few days, going out into the neighborhoods, preaching the gospel and ministering to people, praying for people out there. And we’ve seen God do good things. And then at the festival every night, thousands of people coming to hear the good news. And today we did a children’s event and you had a good illustration. You put two sticks on the ground and challenge kids to jump across the gap and then you widen it wide it until they couldn’t cross the gap. And you use that as an illustration to show that all of us need help in order to get to heaven, to get across the gap of sin. So Charlie, tell us a little bit about Forge and what you do.
Charlie Marq – Forge (01:16):
Sure. Well, forge started in 1986 as Kingdom Building Ministries. God had led my father-in-law, Dwight Robertson, to kind of launch the ministry. And our vision has been the same from the very beginning. It’s really to see a global movement of more kingdom laborers engaging every sphere of society for Christ. And we really believe that the type of people that Jesus called to follow him in the gospels were ordinary people. He didn’t go after the leading synagogue leaders and others who were highly especially trained, but fishermen, business people, tax collectors, working for the government, political revolutionaries, I mean people in everyday places in society. And these are the types of people that he called up close to him to change the world. And so we want to see those types of people sent out into harvest fields everywhere. So that’s really our big picture vision. And we do that through calling people up close to Christ and then equipping them to advance the kingdom in their everyday places through a team of evangelists or speakers, equipping opportunities and discipleship resources.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:18):
And so you are equipping evangelists to publicly share their faith, basically anybody that invites you or anywhere you can go to preach Jesus,
Charlie Marq – Forge (02:28):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:28):
You’re training them up to go out. What does that training look like? How do you equip people?
Charlie Marq – Forge (02:34):
That’s a great question. So there’s a variety of equipping we do, but there’s really two kind of key different ones, or I’ll say three. One is for those who feel called to be an evangelist or an itinerant speaker from place to place, it’s a two year apprenticeship for those to say, Hey, how do I become an evangelist and do that?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:53):
So what does that two year apprenticeship look like?
Charlie Marq – Forge (02:57):
It’s a variety of things. Everything from reading books that are more practically based and going to build their faith and look at people throughout history, biographies or practical books on preaching, there are sermons that they have to write based on certain topics, so evangelistic sermons, camp sermons, and then also equipping sermons to equip believers. So they’ve got to write those and then they preach them at intensives throughout the year and get critiqued on them. So we’ll sit in a room, they’ll preach, they’ll do it. There’s other activities like they needed to do street preaching once they need to go speak for a church service or a camp, a variety of different ministry activities. So that’s kind of what that looks like. And then as far as the everyday believer, there’s a lot of training and focus in the Christian world, so to speak, globally on church leadership and pastors. But we find that the ordinary person church attendee feels ill-equipped. And so we really do exist also for them. And so we come alongside churches and ministries to say, Hey, we’ll provide equipping a life on purpose conference to train your church or a group of churches your everyday believers. And it’s incredible what God’s doing. We just simply say, Hey, I mean if you find forged content online, you’re going to see that we copyrighted most of it straight from Jesus. We just took it. He is like, alright. So we took that in. Jesus’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:19):
Copyright is like, if you’re going to copy it, make sure you copy it. Right,
Charlie Marq – Forge (04:23):
Exactly. So what did he model? He modeled a life up close to people. And we say in the mainstreams everyday places, one life at a time. He’s willing to stop all along the way, people this week here in Zimbabwe have said, Hey, we care about the one, we care about the one Jesus cared about the one. And so we equip people to say, Hey, do that. And what did Jesus do to fulfill that? He would see people stop and spend time. We would literally in the conference, see stop spend time with. And as you spend time with people, you have stories to share. We say, Hey, how has God shown up in your life? Share that. Just share, see, stop spend time and share your God story with people. In doing so, you can invite them also to have, Hey, you can have that in your life as well.
(05:05):
And so that’s kind of a very brief overview of that equipping. But what we found is believers being ignited and empowered. There was a CEO of seven different companies that he runs. Came to one of these trainings at the Billy Graham Library that we hosted and just ignited. Him and his wife went on vacation and they reported back like we’re leading people to Christ on vacation. We never thought we could do this. And he’s like, this is influencing my business. And I think all CEOs need to get this ingrained into their businesses, into their everyday spheres of influence. So it kind of looks like those kind of entities. And then we also have other programming for young adults intensive, like two week up to month and a half program where they can take these concepts but practice them together, put them into action in a variety of places.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:53):
How do people get connected to your program? You have these different apprentices that come. How do you find them and decide to a great question, decide to be discipled?
Charlie Marq – Forge (06:05):
Okay. So as far as, I guess it’s kind of the same whether somebody’s looking to be a speaker or somebody’s like, Hey, I’m a young adult, I want to get on fire for Jesus. Or I’m a church leader and I want my church to be equipped. They find us online or through relationship. We have a team of about 20 speakers. And so when we’re out on the road speaking for camps, retreats, conferences, evangelistic, crusades, you name it, people say, Hey, we like you guys, could you come here? Could you come there? And so really just word of mouth, since 1986 to now, 39 years has mostly been just word of mouth.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:42):
And you are also going into different nations around the world, and you’ve developed strategies for reaching into some very unreached places. Tell me some of where you’re working and what you’ve seen God do.
Charlie Marq – Forge (06:58):
Yeah, so we’ve been in many, many nations, probably well over a hundred throughout our history, but most recently really working in about 20 or so over the last five years. And seeing Jesus just blow our minds. I’m amazed thank him for what he’s doing. I think it’s a revival awakening season. But for example, in Pakistan, there are a high number of not just evangelized regions, but still ethnic people, groups that are 0% Christian, whole tribes, whole valleys, whole regions of people never heard of the gospel. And so God burned Pakistan in our hearts a number of years back about four or five years ago. And so we just went with this vision of raising up more kingdom laborers, ordinary people getting into the harvest. And also what about targeting the unreached people groups? And so God ignited a movement by casting this vision and equipping the churches and challenging them to get outside their four walls and into the everyday places where people don’t know Jesus and what’s really being effective in the Muslim world.
(08:04):
And some of these tough places like Somalia, like Pakistan, where we’re seeing a lot of people come to Christ out of Islam and out of strict, even terrorism. Islam is the love of Jesus. There are people who just see stop, spend time with them authentically care about their life, provide for their needs, meet them at their point of need as a labor saying, I’ll just roll up my sleeves and do what is in front of me. And they’re saying, we want to know about your Jesus now. And so for the sake of security, I’m not going to share exact regions or names of people groups on this, but there’s, I’ll say, scores of people, groups that were 0% Christian just a couple years ago now all have believers among ’em. One particular one went from 0% Christian to 28% Christian in six months.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:51):
Wow. Praise
Charlie Marq – Forge (08:52):
God. Just multiplied. We believe in every life from day one has the opportunity, like the woman at the well or the man with the legion of demons, they encounter Jesus. And from day one, Hey, you can go and share in your village and reach your people and reach your community. And just this ripple effect of dominoes, you may impact Juan, but what’s the next one that comes after?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:13):
Yeah. What are some of the other nations that you have personally visited and share with me some testimonies of what you’ve seen God do.
Charlie Marq – Forge (09:23):
Let’s see. I’ve been to about 30 some now.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:27):
What have you done this year? Let’s talk about,
Charlie Marq – Forge (09:29):
There we go. Yeah. What’s been happening recently, all. So a couple of recent things that have been really incredible in East Africa, we did an evangelistic outreach and had about 20,000 people come. And amazingly almost 4,900 gave their lives to Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:45):
Wow.
Charlie Marq – Forge (09:46):
First time decisions.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:48):
Which country was that? In
Charlie Marq – Forge (09:49):
Kenya.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:49):
In Kenya. Wow.
Charlie Marq – Forge (09:50):
And yeah, I’m western Kenya. That’s amazing.
(09:53):
And I love the, we talk about one life, the individual testimonies. There was a gang member, his wife was killed, a bunch of his friends were gunned down by the police. He was going to commit suicide. And so he was on his way to go commit suicide, passed by the field where this event was happening and decided to stick around, gave his life to Christ, and now has led several other gang members to Christ. There was a girl, because of the shame, unmarried was going to go get an abortion, ended up at this event on the field, gave her life to Christ now has a baby.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:25):
Wow.
Charlie Marq – Forge (10:26):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:27):
Incredible two lives there.
Charlie Marq – Forge (10:28):
Yeah. Hey, that works. And then the other noteworthy, one out of that would be a witch doctor went to that field ahead of time to put curses on the field for the event to fail. And so he came during the event to see how well his curses were working. Not too good, because lots of people came and I guess when I was preaching, he passed out, hit the ground, somebody drug him to a hospital, and he woke up in the hospital and said, I saw that preacher saying Jesus is the way. And so he’s like, I gave my life to Jesus. I’m in my six. I’ve done witchcraft my whole life. Pray for me that I could start a business to provide for my family now. And so that’s the type of thing that’s just incredible to see God do. And we’re seeing young adults across the US as well being ignited for Jesus and families restored at a revive outreach event. Recently, there was a mother and her son who responded, a teenage son, and they wanted to talk to us afterward. And both in tears, she said, I was at the end of myself. I didn’t know what to do. I saw an advertisement online for this event. So I drugg my son here and this is changing everything for us. And he was going, yes, yes, yes, yes. And so the effect of the gospel and people getting up close to Jesus is reuniting families and transforming regions.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:50):
Tell me about what you’ve been doing in the United States. What sense do you have among the young people in the United States for their engagement with the message of Jesus?
Charlie Marq – Forge (12:03):
I think well stats prove that the next generation is the most spiritually open generation that we’ve seen while simultaneously the most anxious generation. So what happens when the most spiritually open and the most anxious collide? I think it collides into a revival opportunity
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:19):
That is interesting. People are very anxious. They went through COVID economic turmoil. It seems like this generation has gone through more than its fair share of trauma and just challenges. And so you can see why there’s
Charlie Marq – Forge (12:37):
Anxiety.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:39):
And then they don’t have the religious hangups that maybe their parents did. Their parents probably maybe came from a religious background and rebelled against it. And a lot of kids these days have grown up with no exposure to much a traditional church.
Charlie Marq – Forge (12:59):
The biblical literacy is also at an all time low. And so they don’t really know. But the cool part is if you’re willing to spend time to answer their tough questions or wrestle through their tough questions with them relationally, they’re in, they’ll listen. They’re all for it. But if you’re like, don’t have the time for it, they’ll move on to someone else or something else quickly. Kind of like social media. Oh, next thing, next thing, next thing. But if you’re that person that will answer their call, sit down at a meal table, say, yeah, let’s talk about your life. What’s your struggle? And love them. No matter what their struggle is, no matter where they’re at, they’re in, you’ve got ’em.
(13:35):
And we’re seeing young adults get set on fire for Jesus and fired up to go represent him wherever they go, wherever that looks like. And when that happens, a heart on fire and a life on purpose, we’re seeing ’em lead people to Christ left and right. It’s incredible. I think we’re going to, I mean right now stats are also, church attendance is higher than it’s been in 10 years. Commitment to Jesus is higher than it’s been in 10 years in the US and it’s all through Gen Z. And something else that’s shifted is it’s through males, former generations, females were leading the charge. Next generation males are leading the charge. And so it’s a really fascinating time of history for that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:13):
Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about your personal testimony. How did you give your life to Jesus? And then how did you know that you were called to be an evangelist?
Charlie Marq – Forge (14:27):
Yeah, good question. So I grew up with really great godly parents taking us to church. They would share the gospel with us, share Bible stories with us. And so we knew, and they all said, you need to make a decision. Give your heart to Jesus. So I was five years old, walk out of school, get into the van with my mom picking me up from school, and I said, today’s the day, mom. I’m give my life to Jesus. Let’s pray. I’m going to pray with you right now in the car. I just wanted to prayed with her in the car, went home to my three-year-old brother and immediately told him his name is Will. If Jesus comes back today, you’re going to hell. You need to give your life to Jesus. Now, I changed my tactics slightly since then as a five-year-old, but immediately had to proclaim, and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:11):
That’s very similar to my testimony. I was saved at a very young age, so young that I don’t remember. But I know that I was called to be an evangelist at the age of five, and I preached my first sermon at the age of six. I wish
Charlie Marq – Forge (15:24):
I could have heard that sermon.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:25):
My mom and dad actually kept a cassette tape for the sermon, and I put it up on YouTube a few years ago. I preached 45 minutes when I was six.
Charlie Marq – Forge (15:34):
What? No way.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:35):
And I knew way more back then than I know now. I talk about eschatology and the mark of the beast and don’t get the mark of the, and now I don’t know anything about end times, but apparently when I was six, I knew a lot. That
Charlie Marq – Forge (15:48):
Was it in with the times. I guess you’re watching left Behind, huh?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:53):
It was before left behind. Yeah. But one of the things I say is if you are saved, stay saved. If you’re not saved, you need to get saved. And so even at the age of six, I said like an evangelist. No
Charlie Marq – Forge (16:07):
Kidding.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:08):
Yeah. But it’s neat that God calls people young. So you were saved at a very young age.
Charlie Marq – Forge (16:12):
So that happened then grew up in a church, helping with youth ministry stuff, doing all the things the church family does. But over that kind of time of junior high and throughout high school, I became very arrogant, very confident in myself
(16:30):
In the vision I wanted for my life, I wanted to join the military for an entire career. Ended up being nominated by Vice President Senator for West Point Air Force Academy, full ride, ROTC, scholarships to leading engineering schools. And that’s what I was going to do. Nobody could stop me. My mom would say, are you sure this is what you want to give your whole life to? And I said, stop asking me. This is what I’m doing.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:49):
Wow.
Charlie Marq – Forge (16:49):
And then I ended up at a camp, a youth pastor at the church I was at, said, Hey, we got invited this camp. Could you come check it out with me to see if you’d be good for our church and youth ministry? I said, sure. So I went with him and I had just taken oath to defend the constitution, and it was right before military training would’ve started
(17:09):
End up at this camp, hearing these phenomenal messages by itinerant speakers and evangelists. They’re really exciting and compelling to me. Messages like getting up close to Jesus, what it looks like practically. And I thought, man, I really need to do that. That’s exciting. A message about passion for Christ and willing to suffer for him no matter what, and reach people. And hearing these stories of the book of Acts alive and present now, I was going, wow, I’m missing something here. And then I heard this message on reaching people all around the world, unreached people, and how for that speaker, it started with listening to God in prayer. And I went to the end of his invitation. At the end of the message was just in prayer, ask God if he has anything to show you or you have a question, ask him, go to prayer. And I literally thought, I have never heard about this side of prayer before. I don’t even know what I think about it. So I prayed, Lord, I don’t know what I think. This is kind of weird, but if you have something to speak to me, I’ll listen.
(18:02):
And immediately I saw this picture in my head of a field in darkness, and then fire and light came through the field. What is that? That wasn’t my idea, but it was just in my mind. I didn’t know what it meant. Until later, God was starting to show me, I want you to start fires in dark places. Your fire starter go bring my light to dark places. So I had that happen that same week as I was praying, this thought came into my mind, you’re willing to risk your life for your country. Would you do that for me?
(18:33):
And wrestled with that thought. So I came home from that camp and I heard that this ministry happens to be forge. I had a discipleship opportunity for young people, and I was like, man, I think I need more of this. God’s doing something in my life. So I think they didn’t want me to come. I did all these pranks at the camp. I caused them to write new rules. I caused all the problems, troublemaker. And so they’re like, ah, you can come if you can raise the $2,000 in the next two weeks. Done raise the money,
(19:01):
Came on the next 16 days of training. And while we were there, there was this cross and the team was praying at this cross. And I got down on my knees to pray. And again, these thoughts come. I felt like the Lord was saying, would you surrender the military and put me first in your life? It was an idol. I said, Lord, yeah. I mean, this is exciting. I will. And he said, if you mean it, get on your face. And my immediate thought was, oh, there’s ants and dirt. Who’s going to join the military? Who cares? There’s ants and dirt. And then I said, I don’t want to look like a freak Christian in front of these people who prays on their face.
(19:35):
I didn’t go to a church with that kind of dynamic. So growing up, so I’m going to prey on my face if you mean it. Get on your face. So I get on my face, Lord, I’m in. I surrender. You’re more important. Whatever you want to do with my life, I’m in this absolute surrender moment. And I started to notice a difference from that point of feeling empowered by the Holy Spirit to be a witness, to start to reach people, sharing Jesus with people. All of a sudden, people are coming to Christ. I feel compelled to do it. And I go home and I say, Lord, I don’t know what to do. I’m going to go to the military still unless you tell me there’s another plan. I have no other plan. Took my Bible to the woods, prayed that, and I felt like God said open to Romans one. So I open to Romans one, and all the words are jumping off the page and cutting me to the heart
(20:22):
Set apart for the gospel obligated to preach. I have to obligated to preach to the wise and the foolish. And God started putting in my mind, you’re going to do that. And those wise people are going to be those who know Christ, but could grow in their passion for him. And the foolish are going to be lost people and unreached places and dangerous places around the world. So I’m like, oh, I’m going to travel and preach and do that. And so I said, all right, that’s it. So I called up the military and said, Hey, I’m backing out of my scholarship. I’m backing out of everything. And they literally said, why? I mean, I hadn’t even started. Nobody would back out of that. I was like, well, God told me not to. So they probably said if he comes back, psychological evaluation. So I backed out. I had saved no money for college because the government was going to pay for everything. And I said, Lord, I’m going to have to fundraise the rest of my life. If this is what I’m called to, you’re going to have to provide. I don’t believe I should go into debt to just start that way.
(21:14):
So you’re going to have to provide for college. I applied for a Bible college on Friday and school started Monday, got in, graduated within a month debt free. God provided everything and haven’t looked back since. Been doing this now for about 14 years.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:29):
Wow. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing on the Evangelism podcast. Oh, one other question I wanted to ask you. Tell me about how you met your wife.
Charlie Marq – Forge (21:41):
Hey, good question. So yeah, I had mentioned my father-in-law started Forge in 1986. So she was at that camp crazy enough, in the same room at the same time, the same message and invitation I was having my encounter with God, she was having one. She felt like God allowed her to hear children’s voices and laughter and putting a burden in her heart like, I’m calling you to be a mother. And so we had these significant spiritual moments in the same room without realizing what God would do in the future, we became acquaintances. Then for a time after that, I was a youth pastor and needed someone to do music. I knew she was gifted in music. So I called her through that. She said, yes, we became good friends. One thing led to another even where I was like, Lord, should I ask her on a date? I mean, I had put before God, I’m willing to be single my whole life and I surrender this to you, but if you want to give the gift, I’ll take the gift
(22:37):
That kind of prayer. So when that time came, I was like, Lord, is this a good idea? Should I ask her on a date? And I did. And I said, I want to talk with your dad first before we go, but I’d like to ask you. And then that same week, the pastors at the church where I was serving at the time, said, Hey, it was a Valentine’s Week. Are you going on a date with anybody for Valentine’s Day?
(22:57):
I said, no, there’s not really anybody to go with. And they’re like, come on man. What about all these girls that serve in the youth ministry and all the rest? I said, well, funny you ask. I’ve been thinking about Dara and asking her out this week and that same week when I was asking her, and the pastor looks at me and says, my wife and I have been praying about that for a long time. We think you should do it. So that one thing led to another, and we’ve been married now for about 10 years. And it’s a joy. She’s an incredible mother to our two kids. How
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:27):
Old are your kids?
Charlie Marq – Forge (23:28):
Five and almost three.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:30):
Wow.
Charlie Marq – Forge (23:31):
And she’s a great worship leader. Kind of holds down the fort often. It’s a hard behind the scenes job while we travel a lot. And so it’s a joy to be called and do it together in that way.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:44):
That’s awesome. So if someone wants to know more information about Forge, maybe learn more about your apprenticeship program and how to become effective at sharing their faith or even support you guys in the international missions that you do, what is a good website where they can find out more information?
Charlie Marq – Forge (24:06):
Yeah, it’s at forge.org. That’s F-O-R-G-E-F-O-R-W-A-R d.org. And people can go there if they want a discipleship resource, if they want to join us on any sort of trip or see where we’re preaching across the US in the globe and go to an event or say, Hey, we want to do equipping together. Can we collaborate and do an equipping opportunity? It’s all there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:28):
And you guys have already developed a lot of discipleship material You’re working on more. Tell me a little bit about some of the resources that you have.
Charlie Marq – Forge (24:36):
Yeah, one of the primaries called Multiplying Movements, it’s on our website as well where you can go to multiplying movements.com. It’s basically a discipleship pathway or resource for every believer. Often as I know you’ve seen well around the world, believers are saying, Hey, I want to make disciples, but what do I actually do? Or as evangelist, okay, we’re there, but what’s next for those people when they make a decision? So it’s really designed to be relational, which is highly important, but also with an end goal and vision. And so it’s not only programmatic and it’s not only relational, it’s both designed for one-on-one mentoring or small groups to say every believer can grow in their depth on their heart, on fire, for Christ and their life on purpose. For him to then become a laborer who says, Hey, with my unique gifts, if it’s bacon cookies,
(25:26):
It’s riding a bike, if it’s fly fishing, I can use my gifts to reach others for Christ in my life and now train them to go and do the same.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:34):
That’s awesome. Well, Charlie, thank you so much for being on the evangel of
Charlie Marq – Forge (25:38):
The podcast. Hey, love being with you and just talking about all this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:40):
Yes, sir.
Charlie Marq – Forge (25:40):
Appreciate it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:41):
Thank you.
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Chris Kingston | Identifying, Affirming, Training, and Mobilizing Evangelists
Chris Kingston is the Executive Director of ETeam Global, an evangelistic ministry founded by Dr. Tim Robnett. Their goal is to equip Ephesians 4 evangelists by identifying, affirming, training, and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. The organization partners with local churches to equip believers for evangelism through various training programs and outreach opportunities. Today you will be inspired as Chris Kingston shares why he is passionate about evangelism.
Learn More About E-Team Global: https://www.eteamglobal.org/
Learn More About Nick Hall and Pulse Evangelism: https://www.pulse.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Chris Kingston is the executive director of ETeam Global, an evangelistic ministry founded by Dr. Tim Robnett. Their goal is to equip Ephesians for evangelists by identifying, affirming training and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. Today you will be inspired as Chris Kingston shares why he is so passionate about leading people to Jesus.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:38):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:02):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus Today I have a very special guest with me, Chris Kingston. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (01:16):
Absolutely, Daniel, it’s definitely a pleasure and it’s good to be talking with you and the rest of everyone today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
And so you are the executive director for ETeamGlobal. Tell us a little bit about what ETeam Global does.
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (01:33):
Absolutely. Great question. So ETeam Global is a partnership of evangelists and basically we identify and affirm train and mobilize evangelists worldwide. But how we do that is through three different ways equipping in the local church here in the United States regionally and nationally. But then we also do quite a bit international kind of forum training with evangelist pastor leaders. And our ministry is now 14 years old and we continue to, we’ve had the blessing being invited to 28 different countries and over the 14 years and currently we’re really focused where God’s had us for 14 years actually in Nigeria. But Ethiopia we’ve been serving in for three years, Slovakia the last three years, as well as southern Spain with tons of African refugees that are coming across. So our team is small, but we function at a high level. We’re all very passionate to share the gospel and Jesus Christ, the greatest hope we have. But we really do work in and through the local church and we believe in the local church. So that’s a quick little shot of who E Team Global is.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:53):
That’s so wonderful. E Team Global was founded by Dr. Tim Robnett, who used to be with Luis Palau for many years, helping to lead the Next Generation Alliance, which I’m connected there. And I met Dr. Tim and he invited me to come and take a class with him at Multnomah University. And he has what is probably one of the greatest training places for evangelism in the world. I don’t know of many universities that offer training for evangelists at the doctorate of ministry level, but they have a great program there at Multnoma. And I went, I took a class with Dr. Tim Robnett and learned so much from him. How did you get connected to Dr. Tim?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (03:51):
Yeah, well that’s a great question, Daniel. In life and in ministry, it’s all about relationships and Jesus was all about relationships. So another evangelist, probably your friend as well, Brad Butcher, Dr. Brad now. He and I have known each other for years. I served with passionate people for about a year and a half, and I was introduced through Brad to Dr. Tim And Dr. Tim came one day and sat down and he was invited by Brad and there was a bunch of evangelist pastors that were praying together on a regular basis. And Tim came and kind of shared with us like two or three times. And I met him years ago and then got reconnected with him I would say in the summer of 2017 through another evangelist, Mike Parker. And so I’ve known Tim since 2010. I consider him since 2017, my mentor friend and also the head founder of ETeam Global Ministry.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
So the goal of ETeam Global is to equip Ephesians for evangelists. And you mentioned it, identifying affirming training and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. Let’s just talk about what each of those things look like. How do you identify a firm train and mobilize evangelists?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (05:17):
Great question. Yeah, I’ll try to make that quick. The identifying is, as you’ve probably seen when you’re out in the field, when you’re doing evangelism or especially in our case when we’re training others, especially our laser point is the evangelist, but we are blessed to go into local churches. But once we train the believers in the local churches, we go out with them. So we go and mentor, we go and model it. And when you’re doing anything, whether it’s street evangelism or festival evangelism or just school evangelism, you see which evangelist kind of rise up from the whole group. And so that’s one of our ways that we identify just through other evangelists who invite us and we do trainings. And then the affirming is really, that’s the long-term relationship. And just as I said, I’ve been knowing Tim since 2010, but 2017 has kind of been pouring into me.
(06:16):
And so the affirming side is another area, but it’s one-on-one relationships. It’s being invited by other ministry leaders, especially evangelists like Nick Hall with Pulse 100 evangelism to kind of affirm younger evangelists or firm. And then the training side, I think that is really the core of ET global. There’s so many great and unique evangelist ministries out there. I really believe through Dr. Tim and his 50 years of faithful ministry and just my heart and passion for the local church is the training side. And so again, we could have a room of 10, we could have a room of 200, and typically those evangelists are usually the ones who come up after the fact or during breaks, ask us questions, say, well, when are we going to go street evangelizing? And so that’s kind of the training side. And then the immobilizing is just the going and doing.
(07:20):
And so that’s kind of where we get on fire when we can go out, share Jesus and some of our friends. It’s many different looks, many expressions, but it’s all the same message whether what it is for me, my wheelhouse and area where I love to go most, where not everyone likes to go is drug rehab centers and just where people have addictions. And I come from a background in that and God pulled me out of the darkness. And basically that’s just one of many areas that we will go, but we will support others like your ministry with missions and just being on the ground for a festival style. But it’s a little bit of all kind of ministry when we mobilize, but we always model it to the individuals that we’re training.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:15):
That’s wonderful. You mentioned Nick Hall and Pulse evangelism. Nick is doing such a great job of bringing evangelism back to America and then raising up this young generation of evangelists. And I know that you have been involved in helping to coach some of the young evangelists with Paul’s evangelism. What does that process look like?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (08:42):
Yeah, great question. Well, as you know, Nick and his ministry is based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they have this vision, and they’re on year four now where it’s a season ministry where they basically put out to the whole country for younger individuals who are already identified as evangelists or just growing in ministry, but they’re passionate to share Jesus. And so the process with Nick’s team is it’s typically ages 18 through about 28, and they have an application process. And a lot of times, just as I mentioned, when they’re out doing outreach, when they’re sharing the gospel, when they’re partnered with different ministries around the country, those evangelists kind of rise up and are the ones on the front lines. So they have an application process, but basically it’s a process once you get kind of accepted for the next year, these young individuals, there’s a hundred of ’em I think this year, I believe there’s over 14 states that are easily represented amongst a hundred evangelists.
(09:48):
They’re men and women, A lot of ’em are university age students or just post university. And what Nick does is just they have some wonderful, it is gathering four times a year in person. And with that, typically that’s a two and a half, three day gathering. And then what we’ll do is there’s worship, there’s time of coaching, mentoring and teaching. And then myself and many others are coach mentors who are evangelists. And so then we connect with our smaller group, which is typically a group of 10, and typically men with men, women with women. And so I’ve got three young men that I’m mentoring right now. I’ll talk to ’em probably twice a month. And then we gather on Zoom to do a core training once a month as a whole entire group. The whole process with Nick through that, they have an internship program, and I think at the end of May, we’ll go out and all be a part of a larger festival style outreach that Nick and Pulse Evangelism 100 are planning. And so that’s kind of like the base of what it looks like, but it’s a great feeder program for them to then take some of those students who are passionate or make the time and then they become interns with that ministry and then they can continue to grow. So that’s just some of the quick DNA of I believe, how they do it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:19):
That’s awesome. Well, let’s talk about your testimony and how you got excited about evangelism. What brought you to a place where you are passionate about training up evangelists?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (11:33):
Yeah, thanks for asking. Great question. So I didn’t come to know Jesus until I was 30, and so I have,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:43):
That’s very rare. A lot of people that are saved today are usually saved pretty young under 18. And so thank God that he can also save older people too.
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (11:56):
Absolutely. Well, to your point, my aunt who was 90 years old in Indiana, she had her 90th birthday many years ago, and I went and stayed with her and that weekend she received Christ as Lord and Savior as a 90-year-old.
(12:14):
So God, it’s never too late. That’s always the messages never too late to come to the hope of Jesus and to know him. So my testimony came to know Christ at the age 30, I’d hit rock bottom. I was living in the country of Australia. I used to my previous life, as I said, I was a sports marketing guy, and basically it was the business world. It was event management, it was just working all the time. But I just always had this emptiness, this spot in my heart that just wasn’t fulfilled. It was always like I needed more. There was the next thing to achieve or to purchase, and it was just empty. And so I came home from Australia after working there two and a half years, and I was really broken. And at that point I had this, it really hidden from almost everyone but my brother, a pretty serious drug addiction that kind of kept building over my years with pain and hurt that I have mask.
(13:14):
But then God sent me to San Diego, and once he sent me to San Diego, I kind of hit rock bottom. But through that, someone, a stranger invited me to church and they invited me and I went for the first time in years. And I got to tell you, Daniel, it wasn’t like church, it wasn’t all about the religion. It wasn’t about all these traditions or liturgical things, it just was worship with young people in this gymnasium. And the pastor got up and he shared the gospel, and I just, in my heart, the Holy Spirit moved and he’s just like, Chris, this is what you’ve always been looking for. This is it. You don’t need to look anymore. This is it. And I got to tell you, Daniel, I mean the whole room for me out of a thousand young people, it got smaller and smaller.
(14:03):
My eyes were just locked on this pastor sharing this truth. And I was like, why hasn’t anyone ever shared this with me? Why have I never heard this? And so anyways, praise God for his patient waiting and loving kindness, even through all my past sinful things, I walked forward that night and asked Jesus to come into my life. And I got to tell you that night and the next morning I woke up, I was a different person. No more desire for drugs and alcohol, just really cold Turkey, just that. But what really propelled me into what is my call as an evangelist. So I was growing. Finally, I got connected with this church. I was part of Men’s Bible study weekly. I started serving on the hospitality team, low level things. But then I moved in with these three men who were believers and they were discipling me in San Diego in this really small apartment that I didn’t even know what the word discipleship meant, or they’re discipling me.
(15:11):
And through that, I just kept reading God’s word. It says, go therefore and make disciples in all nations. And about a year and a half into my walk with Jesus, I was just like, I keep reading this word go, especially in the New Testament and well, I want to go. And so anyways, long story. After I prayed that prayer, I think it was probably just like two to three months later, I meet this guy through a roommate of mine and they’re going to Nepal and they’re going to go do a door to door evangelism, mission outreach during the largest Hindu Festival of the year in mid October in Nepal, in the Capmandu Valley. So God says, go, I have my Bible. I didn’t know any of these other people. And with that, we went and it was just faithfully reading God’s word. And we would go and knock on people’s doors, and it was almost like Christmas time in America, but in their festival and their culture, all their family members were all together and they were all there and we’re knocking on these doors. And they invited us in. We started telling ’em why we were there. And Daniel that week amongst our group that was 16 people, and I was one of those, there was over 376 people that came to Christ.
(16:33):
And I was just like, is this normal? I’m asking the other leaders, is this what normally happens? They’re like, this is pretty special. God’s spirit is moving. Holy spirit’s moving. And so with that, there’s a lot more to that story. But I came back after that mission trip and I ended up staying an extra five weeks radical things were happening. God was using four of us that stayed back. And basically that is where my passion for evangelism came. I never knew I was an evangelist. I really, honestly, I had my Bible, I had little tabs and I would read one scripture. I was still such a new believer. Then I flipped to the next scripture and the next one through that, I came back and I was like, what just happened there in Nepal? I want that to be the rest of my life. God was so faithful to continue to open doors. And basically he led me three months later to an evangelist disciple making school in San Diego with Pastor Mike McIntosh, who’s an evangelist. Greg Laurie and Mike McIntosh were part of the Inner Circle with Chuck Smith out of the Calvary Chapel. But from there, I entered the school and I just continued to grow. And so that is where I really found my calling as an evangelist. And that was in 2006, and I really haven’t looked back from there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:03):
Wow. What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing. I noticed on the wall behind you, there’s lots of flags from different countries.
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (18:12):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:13):
What are some of the favorite places that you’ve been and what have you seen God do in some of these places?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (18:19):
Loaded question. Okay. Well, I would say one of the flags back here is Haiti. And Haiti is a very special place for my wife and I. And we had the privilege to go three different times back in 2012. And that was just, it was a reconfirmation for me that I was supposed to be basically a missionary living in the United States, but going and coming back and partnering with local churches and denominations. But that trip to, let’s just say that trip, the first mission trip to Haiti really reignited some passion of mine that Satan was kind. He was honestly stealing a lot of joy. And at one point I got married, we moved up to Portland, Oregon, and things got kind of rough. And I wasn’t really, I was serving in a ministry for a year, and then the ministry was growing. I was a youth pastor.
(19:19):
Kids were getting stayed. We were doing multiple collaboration outreaches with other youth pastors and other churches. And one day they just came back. I came back from visiting my dad who’s dying of brain cancer, and the people were like, Hey, we’re just going to go another direction. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And they’re like, well, this is going to be your last week. Ministering to the kids as youth pastor and Daniel, there was no sin. There was no ministry fall. They just were going to go a different direction. And so I kind of sat in that for a year and a half, which was a very dark time for me. But Haiti was the place that God used to reignite my passion. So I have a very special place in my heart there. Obviously the Nepali flag, you heard that story, but I would say that one of the flags that I probably, I don’t even have it up, it’s not in all, but my second mission trip in May of 2006 was to Poland.
(20:20):
It was southeastern corner of Poland. What I didn’t know at that point, Daniel, was we got a chance as our ministry school, 56 individuals that were all more or less evangelists or growing into being evangelists. We did outreaches and collaborated with the local church, but God selected myself and this other guy, Nick. And every day, the missionary couple would pick us up early in the morning right after breakfast, and we would be whisked away in a car and we would go to all these public high schools all across Southern Poland. And we were sharing our testimonies. We were sharing most importantly God story, and kids were getting saved inside the local public schools. And I just remember the whole culmination was we always had invitations. And at the end of the three weeks, we invited them all to come to where we were staying at, and we did a large outreach, and there was just tens and tens of kids that got saved that day.
(21:19):
And so Poland for me is also very special just because the fact that I originally went to Europe as a kid in 1985, and then there was all this time in between. And then what I didn’t know about what God knew was he sent me to Poland in 2006. But since then, I’ve gone numerous, numerous times to Europe and really had a very special place, especially with central Europe and Eastern Europe. And one of the other flags is Slovakia. God has led our ministry to, and we’ve been partners for just with other evangelists, a family, a dad, and two sons. And God’s used that in very powerful ways. So my heart is the great commission. My heart is to win the loss. My heart is all nations. But it’s one of those things. At the same time, I’m thankful to be able to go, but then come back home. And also being a equipper in the local church or a pastor that I was for 10 years locally in the West Coast, and now we live in Ohio, so now it’s a new season. We’re not sure what God’s doing.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:27):
You bring a unique perspective as both a pastor and now an evangelist. What are some of the things that you would do to encourage pastors to involve their congregation in reaching out to their community?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (22:44):
Oh, that is such a great question. Thank you for asking it. So a lot of times we realize, I think our wheelhouse, what we do and encourage pastors, usually it’s like mid-size churches or smaller churches. And the reason we say that is let’s use the smaller churches like a standalone pastor. They maybe have one admin assistant 10, 12 hours a week, but we say, Hey, this is what we just want to get to know them. We want to pray with them and then hear their hearts and hear where their congregation is. And so much of the time, as you probably experienced too, Daniel, it’s the fact that the congregation, they might have the desire to go reach their neighbors, their family members or their coworkers, but the fear sets in. And so we just have some very basic trainings that it’s baseline, but it really takes evangelism and makes it very practical.
(23:45):
And so I would say to pastors out there, sometimes you hear the word evangelists and you’re like, oh boy, what does this guy want? Is he going to swoop in? Is he going to just be all focused? But then you’re never going to see him again. I want to encourage pastors to ask the question of any evangelistic ministry, any evangelist, well, what is this relationship going to look like and how long do you plan to partner with us? And so with the ETE Global, we do a minimum of a two year partnership with any pastor, local church, and even our ministries overseas obviously. And some of those are 10 years, eight, 14. But for the local pastor, I’d say give the evangelist a chance. But I think one of the core things that hopefully the evangelist would do first and foremost, just even having the privilege to maybe come in where the pastor’s opening the church up to equip their saints for the work of the ministry is the fact that as evangelists, we would just have a heart of prayer and we’d be people of prayer.
(24:50):
Just as Billy Graham said, it begins with prayer, and the middle has to be prayer, and the end is always prayer. And so that’s one of the encouragement I would give to pastors. Sometimes those pastors, smaller, mid range size churches, they’re just so maxed out and they need to have a brother in Christ who’s very specifically called to equip the saints and to show and to go model. It’s not just to tell, but it’s to go model with the people and looking at what would that special outreach or what are simple things they can do in their community to begin winning the people around them. And as you and I know, I mean the Holy Spirit always has to be at the center of this, and it’s not us, and it’s not our words. It’s God’s word and the power and the Holy Spirit moving and convicting in people’s hearts and minds to draw them in. And so that would just be a few little pieces of advice I’d share with a local pastor.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:54):
Well, that is tremendous advice. If someone is interested in connecting with ETE Global, finding out more about you, maybe even supporting your ministry, helping you to go to different nations around the world, how can they find out more information about you?
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (26:12):
Thank you. Our website is the best centralized place, so that’s obviously WW Debo, and then ETE Global, all one word, E-T-E-A-M-G-L-O-B-A l.org. So ete global.org. And they could learn so much more about the ministry. We’re always looking for prayer partners and other future ministry partners that would love to come alongside us financially or even go with us. And so we’re always open. And even for pastors that might be listening to this, we would love to talk to you by phone, zoom, and then start praying with you to see if this might be a fit to come alongside your church and be able to bless you and the congregation.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:56):
Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I appreciate it.
Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (27:02):
Such a privilege, Daniel. Have a blessed Merry Christmas and thanks for the opportunity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:07):
Yes, sir. Bless you.
Host of Evangelism Podcast (27:08):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Daniel King (28:10):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (29:31):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Global Day of Youth Evangelism | Dare 2 Share Live with Greg Stier
November 9, 2024 is going to be a global day for youth evangelism and you are invited to participate. Greg Stier from Dare to Share has put together an app called “Life in Six Words” and a series of training videos that will help young people to share their faith. It is all free and today on the Evangelism Podcast we talk about how you can be involved in this worldwide outreach.
Learn More About the Event: https://www.dare2share.org/events/live/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
November 9th, 2024 is going to be a Global Day for Youth Evangelism and you are invited to participate. Greg Stair, from Dare 2 Share has put together an app called Life in Six Words and a series of training videos that will help young people to share their faith. It’s all free. And today on the Evangelism Podcast, we talk about how you can be involved in this worldwide outreach.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:39):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:04):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special friend with me, Greg Stier from Dare 2 Share. Thank you so much for joining me,
Greg Stier (01:16):
Daniel. It’s great man. So glad to be here. Last time we were together was in South Korea and you and I and about 23 others hit the road, hit the streets and did some evangelism. It was awesome
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:26):
And it was really a tremendous time. We were at the Uzon Conference on world evangelization and out of 5,000 participants, we managed to get 25 to go out with us and share with people. And I remember we had about 53 gospel conversations and presentations and eight people that responded in a positive manner to the gospel message that we shared with them.
Greg Stier (01:56):
And remember the miracle we’re trying to have that first gospel conversation and the guy couldn’t speak English very well and a guy came out of nowhere who was an 18-year-old who knew a little bit of English, but he translated for us and he wasn’t even with the event. He stayed with us for what three hours and got so excited that he wanted to continue to do evangelism with his friends on the streets of South Korea.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:21):
And I think what God did in his life was actually probably the most significant part of the entire time. He got a chance to share his faith. He was discipled some while we were there and he became enthusiastic about talking to people about Jesus. It was really amazing.
Greg Stier (02:39):
And I got to see Daniel firsthand do evangelism. And I just want to tell you, this is a guy that isn’t just talk about it on a podcast, he does it and he gets right in and shares the good news with a big smile on his face. And the joy of Christ is all over him. So testify to Daniel King, man, it was awesome.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:58):
Well, that’s what it’s all about. Alright, Greg, you have an exciting event coming up. I mean, your ministry Dare to Share has been challenging people to share their faith for many years now, and you have this exciting event that you’re trying to get people all over the world to participate in it. Tell me about it.
Greg Stier (03:20):
Yeah, it’s called Dare to Share Live. And so we’ve trained millions of teenagers and adults for the last 33 years. We used to do big mega events and bring students in and train ’em and equip ’em and unleash ’em. And once we decided, Hey, it’s time to go global, we said, you know what? Let’s make it on demand. Let’s make it a day of global youth evangelism. Let’s provide the inspiration. So I got key speakers from around the world. We do a drama, there’s training, and then the key part is everybody’s equipped. And then they go out, students go out, adults go out, share the gospel, and there’s City. We give them all the tools. We have a life and six words app for them to be able to share their faith. It’s in 24 different languages. They’re trained, equipped, and then they go out and then they come back and share stories.
(04:05):
And on the app you’re able to see stories from around the world of teenagers, from Nigeria to Nevada, from Dubai to Denver, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s completely free. It is an English, Spanish and Portuguese. And so man, if you’re in a country that where the students speak English, just do dare to share live English, Spanish or Portuguese, go to Dare to share live.org, sign your group up, it’s free and it walks you through the steps. And November 1st you’ll download the videos. And November 9th is the Global Day of Youth Evangelism. And if you’re not able to participate, would you be praying for these tens of thousands of teenagers around the world getting trained, equipped to mobilize to share the gospel on November 9th?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:59):
And so this is a big initiative specifically for November 9th. And tell me what you’re hoping to see happen around the world as people participate.
Greg Stier (05:11):
Well, we did it last year on November 11th, and I’m going to tell you what we saw was teenagers in Nigeria where it’s the fifth most persecuted nation in the world, going out and sharing Christ on the streets, calling their friends or Muslim friends in Sharon Christ, Argentina. We had another 3000 students going out, Sharon Christ, wherever across the United States. It was awesome and really, I mean brought tears to my eyes because you can scroll through the hashtag on the Life in six words app and see teenagers from around the world risking everything to go out and share the good news of the gospel. But they’re equipped. It’s not just inspiration and go, it’s like we train you. How do you bring it up? How do you share Christ? How do you explain the gospel? How do you bring somebody to a point of decision? So it’s highly inspirational, it’s very practical and what really makes it work is going out and like we did in Luanne Daniel, we hit the streets with the gospel and you come back just like we did. Then we came back and we all shared stories. These youth groups share stories, but they also hear stories from around the world from other teenagers. And so for a teenager in Lincoln, Nebraska where there’s 20 kids in the room, they may feel, well, there’s not a lot of us. But then they realize, man, there’s not tens of thousands. There’s thousands of tens all over the world sharing Christ. And so our vision ultimately is to see this happen in every country so that every teen everywhere can hear the gospel from a friend.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:48):
So if my friends who are listening want to participate in this worldwide outreach on November the ninth, where can they find more information? Where can they sign up and get involved in what’s happening?
Greg Stier (07:00):
Yeah, just go online to Dare to share live.org. That’s the number two Dare to share live.org and register and it’ll walk you through the steps. So what you need to do is very simple, and again, the videos which you’ve already filmed pre-filed, the videos are available November 1st you download those and English, Spanish or Portuguese, and then November 9th you gather your students and you show ’em the videos. You can have your own worship band if you’d like and everything else you can make it a big, big event or it could be 10 of you in a room and then you go out and share Christ and it is awesome. It is really, really cool.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:45):
So a youth pastor could use this to equip his young people in order to share their faith or someone who leads a small group of young people or even a young person who’s listening. If you’ve got a group of friends and you want to go out and do some evangelism, they can use this to equip themselves and how to share their faith. And then to go out and actually lead someone to Jesus.
Greg Stier (08:08):
And I would say even if you’re an adult and you say, I have an adult small group, adults need to lead the way. We just did a research project. The number one impact on whether a teenager shares the faith is if they have adults in their lives that are actively sharing the faith. So it’s something you could do as adults, college groups. We have a ton of college groups doing it. What’s really, really cool is yesterday I was backing out, I was on the other side of town, I was backing out, this is not cool, I almost hit you guys. I was talking on my phone. That was a bad move. I got out, I thought they were angry, I was going to apologize, and I knew one of the guys, and he’s a ministry guy that used to go to Dare to Share and he’s like, Hey, this guy trains teenagers how to share the gospel.
(08:48):
And this other guy who I’d never met goes perfect. He goes, I have an 11-year-old, she started a bible study on our public school campus with 25 other 11 year olds and they want to share their faith but they don’t know how and I didn’t know what to do, so show me what to do. And I said, dare to share live. And I explained it and he’s like, yes, dare to share live going to be led with a group of 25 11 year olds on November 9th here in Denver, because I almost hit a dude, almost hit her dad with a car.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:21):
Well that’s awesome when God can turn something like almost hitting someone into an opportunity to get people involved in witnessing. Alright, so you have mentioned several times this app that you’ve developed life in six words that’s available wherever apps are downloaded, just life in six words.
Greg Stier (09:46):
Yeah. If you go to your app store and just look up life in six words, it’s the numeric six life in six words, and you can download it again. It’s in 24 languages and growing. And what’s cool is you go through the app and you put your six words in, and when you want to share the gospel, you just ask someone, how would you describe your life in six words? And they choose from words like relationship, freedom, fun, god, meaningless, happiness, family struggles, adventure, money, purpose, routine, broken pain. And then you, after they push the words, you ask them, tell me why you chose those words. You hear their story and people just open up and then you say, can I share with you my words and I have my words and that’s how I share my testimony. Then can I share with you God’s words? And it’s just a simple gospel acrostic that it is like a digital track. If you can swipe and read, you can share the gospel using this, and you get all the way through and it spells gospel and then you ask ’em at the end, are you ready to trust Christ? If they push yes, water comes out and baptizes them, no, that’d be cool. That doesn’t happen, but that’s a later update. We’ll have that, but it’s a really, really simple way to share the gospel. Just go on your app store life in six words.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:10):
One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of people don’t really know what the true gospel is. And we had some conversations about this when we were out looking for people to talk to in South Korea, but just take a moment and share what is the gospel? What do people really need to know about the gospel?
Greg Stier (11:29):
Yeah, so you and I talked about an illustration. I use a ladder versus a chair. So most world religions have a ladder approach. You got to climb, you got to stop or try or cry. You have the 10 commandments of Judaism, you have the doctrines and covenants of Mormonism. You have the five pillars of Islam. You can go on and on eightfold path of Buddhism. There’s that. You climb, only Christianity is a chair. Well, there’s no rungs to climb. It’s not about you trying or turning or giving or I mean it’s about resting, sitting, relying on the finished work of Christ. When you put your faith alone in him and what he’s done for you on the cross, you’re saved. And that is a mind blowing because our flesh wants to climb. But Jesus said, you have to humble yourself. It’s not about what you can do, it’s about what he has done.
(12:26):
You receive that by faith, and so I dare to share. We use that simple gospel acrostic. God created us to be with him. O is our sins separated us from God. S his sins cannot be removed by good deeds. P is paying the price for sin. Jesus died and rose again. He is everyone who trust in him alone, his eternal life and hell is life with. Jesus starts now and forever. And that’s the gospel that we kind of train students in. And right in the center of it is a bloody cross in an empty tomb that Jesus paid the price in our place for our sin and he rose victorious from the dead and through faith alone in him we have life. And that is repentance. When you change your mind about trusting in the ladder and trusting in yourself and you put your faith in Christ alone, you rest on the finished work of Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:18):
Yeah, religion always says, do you have to do this? You have to do that. But when Jesus died on the cross, he said, it is finished. And so true. Christianity says, done, done, done. Jesus accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished on the cross, and now we rest in it. We can sit down because we don’t have to strive or strain or work really hard in order to earn anything. All we have to do is accept what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.
Greg Stier (13:47):
Well, and Daniel, what’s so cool about that is once you get that and you understand the grace of God and you receive it by faith, then you actually want to go all in and I’m going to run up and pick up my cross every day and follow Christ. Not because I have to be saved. I’m grateful and it’s a whole different motivation, man. I’m jacked to pick up the cross. I’m pumped up. Let’s go because I’ve received the free gift of eternal life. And now it’s like I told a guy one time, I was in a mall, talked to two gang guys. One dude was big, he was jacked, and the other guy, he wasn’t interested in listening. So I talked to the big guy and he was in a gang, and I said, I went through the gospel and he understood. I said, does that make sense?
(14:27):
He goes, yeah. I go, would you put your faith in Christ right now? He goes, yeah. I said, where are you going to go when you die? He goes, heaven. I go, how do you know because you live a good life. He goes, no, Jesus died from my sins. And I go, okay, then you’re in the family, so you got it. But then I said, let me ask you a question. If I had a million dollars in a duffel bag and I gave it to you as a free gift, would you take that free gift and then punch me in the face, push me to the ground, Goodfellas boots, stop me, spit on me and walk away? And he goes, no, I’d buy you a hamburger, man. Go. Okay, why? He goes, because I’m grateful. I said, God is just giving you something better than a million dollars.
(15:01):
He’s giving you the free gift of eternal life through faith in his son, yours simply by faith. Now you’re going to spit in his faith, you’re going to serve him. He goes, I’m going to serve. I go, why? Because you have to, because you’re grateful. He goes, because I’m grateful. Right? Then he got it. Serving Christ, surrendering Christ is a response to that free gift of eternal life. After we receive it, then we get the privilege and opportunity of going all in for Jesus because we are grateful. And that’s a whole different thing than religion.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:29):
Amen. Well, I am grateful, and if you’re listening, you’re grateful for what Jesus has done for you, then you will want to share that with others. And so November 9th is the big day. I encourage you to participate in it, get out, share your faith, and one more time, give us the website where people can sign up. I want you to go there right now, sign up and get involved. Download the video training and the information. Get the app on your phone so that you can be better at sharing your faith.
Greg Stier (16:02):
Yeah, it’s just dare2sharelive.org. That’s the number two. Dare2sharelive.org.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:10):
So go sign up right now and participate November 9th this year and worldwide, I believe God will give a great harvest of souls. Greg, thanks so much for being on the Evangelism podcast.
Greg Stier (16:23):
Thanks my brother.
Evangelism Podcast Host (16:24):
Is there evidence for God’s existence? How do we really know Jesus was raised from the dead? Can we trust the Bible? Do miracles happen? Does God care about me as an individual? In Dr. Daniel King’s book, proof God is real. You’ll find the answers to these three vital questions and more Is God there? Does God care? And do I dare to follow him? In his powerful, easy to read book, Daniel provides seven convincing proofs of God’s existence. You’ll learn about the evidence of cause. Design, logic, morality, scripture, miracles, and religious experience with proof God is real. You’ll read about topics like, was Jesus the son of God or just a crazy preacher? If God does exist, is he interested in your life? If God is there, why do bad things happen to good people? In proof, God is real. Daniel King shows you, God is there and he cares for you. Plus how to take a leap of faith and start a relationship with a God who deeply loves you. Order proof God is real today by calling 1-877-431-4276 or find the book on Amazon.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:28):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (18:48):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Peter Youngren | It’s All About Jesus!
For fifty years, Peter Youngren has been reaching people for Jesus. His ministry reaches out to people from many different religions through his Friendship Festivals. He is known for pointing people to Jesus. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast we talk about the importance of reaching unreached people, the role of grace in evangelism, and the central message of preaching Jesus Christ. Pastor Peter Youngren also talks about his global mission center in Kenya and his goal to train young evangelists. He emphasizes the need to strip away “Christianese” and adapt the Gospel message to different cultures while keeping the central message of Jesus Christ. Pastor Peter also shares some of his greatest memories and victories in ministry, as well as the challenges faced.
Learn more about Peter Youngren’s ministry: https://peteryoungren.org/
Transcript:
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 Peter Youngren. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (00:12):
Well, thank you, Daniel. It’s my pleasure and I haven’t seen you for a while. It’s good to see you again.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:17):
Well, I want to start by saying how grateful I am for you and for your ministry. I was attending Pastor Charles Neiman’s Church down in El Paso, Texas as a young evangelist. I told him, I really feel this call from God on my life to be an evangelist says, you need to meet my friend Peter Youngen. So I called your office up in Canada and asked if I could come meet you. And you said, no, I don’t want to meet you in Canada, but if you want to come meet me in the middle of Africa, I would love to see you in Africa. And so I went all the way to Goma, Congo and got to see a great gospel crusade there, a festival. And God moved in a tremendous way. And that was where I met my beautiful wife, Jessica, who was working for you. And so I apologize, I stole her away, but she is a great worker there. Jessica is a great blessing.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (01:16):
Lemme give me, give you the first impression. I knew that this man, Daniel King, was going to meet me in Goma. We somehow arrived in the city and I saw this, obviously you look different than the locals with your white skin, but you were all dirtied and you had been really in the trenches. And I said, who’s that man? They said, oh, that’s the Daniel King. I said, I like him right away. He’s not afraid of getting his hands in the dirt and doing the job. So that was a good start for both of us, I hope.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:48):
Yeah. So just this week I got back from Congo. This was the first time I went back to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since I met you there about 17, 18 years ago. That’s a
Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:00):
Long time ago. Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:02):
Yeah. And we had a great, great gospel festival in Ganja Dika, and God is moving in the nation of Congo. That’s
Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:11):
Beautiful. I saw the pictures that look really wonderful. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:14):
Tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing and what you’re planning right now.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:20):
Well, we continue to do the festivals. I call them festivals instead of crusade. A lot of them are in areas we are trying to reach out to people of other religions other than the Christian religion. And so the word festival works very well and parallel with that of, because we have our Bible schools, we have Bible schools in Myanmar, which is formerly Burma. We have a many East Africa. We have two in Indonesia, one in the Sumatra on the one side of the country, another one in Papua, the other side of the country. But we’ve been working on our school in Africa, in Kenya and creating a global mission center there where we train to train evangelists. And we are also just about to start inviting pastors, evangelists, believers who feel called to evangelism to come and spend 10 weeks in Africa. Years ago, a dear friend of mine, he had a tremendous idea.
(03:20):
He bought a hotel in California and invited students from all over the world, India, Africa, come to San Diego. I’m talking about a person who had profound influence of my own life by Morris Cerullo, inviting people to come and study in San Diego, be empowered by the spirit. And that was a tremendous idea to spend three months like that. But there was one little problem, which I think he discovered that was once all these folks from Africa and India and Pakistan and had come to San Diego, they didn’t want to go home again. They wanted to stay in California. Who can claim that, Daniel? I think I would’ve stayed as well. California is beautiful. So what we are saying is that come and join our students for 10 weeks or eight weeks in Africa and be trained and then have your own campaign, your own crusade or festival in Africa. We will help you set it up and then we’ll send you back to wherever you came from, whether that was California or Europe or wherever you came from. Because we need to train workers for the harvest. We need to train people. And I think our particular gift maybe is to reach people, communicate the gospel with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, people of other religions. And so I want to pass that on to others. I’ve been doing this for 50 years now, so I’ve been doing this for a while.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:40):
Well, let’s go back to the beginning. How did you know that you were called to be an evangelist? How did you come to know the Lord as your savior? And then how did you get started doing evangelism?
Evangelist Peter Youngren (04:51):
Well, we just got 20 minutes or so. So let me say that I received Christ, it was obviously very meaningful. I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. That was a big change for me, made me very bold so that we could talk a long time about that. But then for me, one of the great influences of my life was the late Dr. T.L. Osborn, who by the way I got to know later on, spent time. He came and celebrated my 50th birthday spending a week with me here in Toronto. So we became friends. So, but he influenced me a lot. And I heard him one time say, all you need is a call, is Mark 1615, go into all the world that preach the gospel and some of that. That really touched me in a profound way. It may seem like it is a statement, but it touched me very profoundly.
(05:40):
So what I did, I started to just share the gospel. I always said that in the town where I was raised, there was a lot of alcoholics and they gathered in a certain park and I would go to that park and preach, you have to start where you are. I wasn’t looking for a ministry. I wasn’t looking to start any great ministry organization. I was just sharing the gospel with Pete. Well, one thing led to another, some pastor heard about it, said, can you share on Sunday night in our church? And so that led to that and that led to other things. And so I, I’m a firm believer is just start where you are, do what you can. Don’t wait for some great opening, don’t wait for some great opportunity. Start with what’s in your hand. Because as I look back, this wasn’t some plan I had at the time. I just looked back on it what caused doors to open for me. I was just doing what was before me to do and the one thing led to the other. So that’s the advice I give to young men and women who are starting in ministry. Don’t wait for some great opening that you’re going to be invited to the world’s largest church and suddenly it’s going to put you on the map. Just love and reach people where you are.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:53):
Amen. Well, you are a very innovative thinker and you have brought some great innovations to evangelism and there really is a huge need for evangelism. I was looking at one page on your website and you have some statistics there. It says, of finances that are given to foreign missions, 87% goes for work among Christians. 12% goes for work among already evangelized. And only 1% of money given to foreign missions is used for work among on reach people groups. And then 0.1% of all Christian giving is used for mission’s efforts into 38 least evangelized countries. Christians spend 95.4% of offerings on home-based ministry, 4.5% on cross-cultural efforts among already reach groups and only 0.1% to evangelize the on reach. The average Christian only gives an average of about one penny a day to global missions. And so your whole life, you’ve been talking to the body of Christ saying, we need to change our methods and our focus. We need to put more resources into actually reaching people who are unreached. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (08:09):
Yeah, because it is very natural. We don’t need to beat ourself up about this. It’s true about all of us evangelists and pastors. We tend to go where we’re invited and if we are invited to a certain place, it means they’re already believers there. Sometimes somebody contacts me and says, oh, we can guarantee a hundred thousand people. We’ve done it before. I’m thinking I don’t want to go there if they’ve done it before, if they’re so sure, they just have such masses already, that doesn’t appeal to me so much. And so to go to areas where there’s not a lot of people to celebrate you, but to break into those areas, you need more money because the television station owner doesn’t feel led to give you a special deal or the radio station has it. So you have to believe God for the finances and then seek a way into these areas.
(09:02):
What I have developed is an approach I call simply the friendship approach, which sounds innocent enough, but we search out religious and governmental leaders that are people at least open-hearted, whether they’re Muslim or Hindu or whatever they are. And we try to make an inroads with them. And once we get to know the leaders, and your wife used to work in this area and she was like, so good. Let me tell you, you took a good worker there, Jessica, I can still see her. She was so good in organizing these things. And once you meet the leaders then and you’re able to, and the people see, oh, this foreign preacher here, he’s here with our head of the Buddhist Monks Association, so then he mustn’t be too dangerous so I can go and hear him. So my friendship approach to these people of other religious is not for the purpose of religious dialogue in the conventional sense.
(10:04):
I stand for a hundred percent for Jesus. I’m not dialing it down. I’m just creating friendship approach. And thereby I eased the way for the people in the certain city to come and listen to my message. After all, I’ve already befriended their leaders. So some of the things we work on and it takes a little bit more effort and we try to work with, I’m just going to be in Madagascar in a couple of weeks time. And so when I was there last year, the Lord really opened the door to the President and to his advisors. And so we are looking for openings to really touch the whole nation, not just have a church meeting or a church conference.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:45):
God has given you a powerful revelation about the grace of God. How should God’s grace flavor the message of the evangelist?
Evangelist Peter Youngren (10:58):
Well, I say, I know people say you preach grace. Well, I preach Jesus Christ. Really. I say to people, we don’t preach miracles. We preach Christ, but miracles follow the proclamation of Christ. And so to preach grace is to preach Jesus Christ, who he is, how he reveals God and what Jesus has done, we call it the finished work of the cross, is one theological expression, the finished work of the cross. So we preach Christ and people say that’s a message of grace. And I think that’s true. Jesus Christ is the personification of God’s grace. So that’s very accurate. And my focus there in preaching that is focusing on very Christ-centered. I make that very clear when I train other evangelists, I was training someone and he was preaching and he was telling all the miracle stories. So it is good to tell the stories of what God has done in other cities, but don’t build your whole sermon on those stories. Preach Jesus Christ and let the miracles fall of the proclamation of the gospel. And in some parts of the world, I don’t need to tell you, but maybe your listeners don’t realize how much they talk about miracles, miracles, miracles all the time. So I want to really make a distinction. We don’t preach miracles. We preach Jesus Christ and miracles follow.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:26):
So what does it sound like to preach Jesus?
Evangelist Peter Youngren (12:30):
Well, I published a book called You are There where I published eight of my most favorite sermons that I preached. And so I usually start the first night and I receive this I think with the watching TL Osborne, I preached Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever because I find that message introduces the city to the concept that we expect to happen today. What happened 2000 years ago. So that’s the first installment of my series of sermons in the festival. I want to introduce the people to Jesus Christ today, not just Jesus of history, not Jesus of the future in heaven, but Jesus today, I say, if you are sick today, it’s wonderful to know that he healed people 2000 years ago. It’s wonderful to know you’re going to be in heaven one day, but if you have cancer right now, you need to know that Jesus Christ is today. So I see my producer brought me this book. You Are There is the book that I published with about eight messages. I give it to future evangelists. I said, listen, these eight messages, some of them I got on my own. Some of them I probably got from listening to somebody. I can’t remember after 50 years I got them. But I tweaked them and I said, take these sermons, preach them. They will work for you. So I have different questions.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:57):
Well, I know I’ve preached a few of your sermons, so thank you for lending those to me.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (14:03):
Well, I probably received them from others. And so our message, people say, well, what do you preach in different countries? What do you preach to Buddhist? What do you preach? I preach Jesus Christ. It’s not that complicated really. You don’t have to adapt your message and make some fancy new formulation. People all over the world understand sin, shame, guilt, fear, bad karma. These are all negative emotions and beliefs that people have. And Jesus Christ answers all those problems. Guilt, shame, fear, bad karma, whatever you want to call it. Jesus Christ responds to all of that. So if you preach him, you don’t have to worry about, well, what do I say to this group? And what do I say to that group? Now, your illustrations of course adapts to your circumstance, but the central message is the same.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:54):
So you’re launching this global mission center in Kenya where you’re bringing evangelists in from different parts of the world to train them. What are some of the key things that a young evangelist should know before they launch out in their evangelistic ministry? Well,
Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:14):
Our emphasis is on reaching people without Christ. So frankly, some young preachers who start, they have to be stripped of their christianese. They’re so full of
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
Hallelujah
Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:27):
Church language.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:28):
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:29):
Yeah, so Africa, east Africa won. They’re so full of that that they can’t communicate with someone who is outside their realm. They’re so used to God’s going to send a reliable God’s making a way where there’s no way, and he’s opening the Red Sea. 40 people, Buddhists don’t know what you’re talking about. So we want to help them. And I think that act, chapter 17 to me, is a great teaching chapter for anybody who wants to evangelize outside of the church realm. How Paul, though he initially was grieved by the idolatry of the Athenians, he initially was disturbed, probably felt like rebuking them, like maybe we do. But he somehow simmer down and he didn’t. And instead he commenced them. He says, oh, I see you Athenians. You’re so religious, so you have these altars. See, his approach really teaches us a lot about how to approach people that are not from the church world. So act 70, that’s just one thing. But there are many things that we teach people. I’ve written a whole book about menacing to Muslims, how to present Christ to Muslims. That’s the answer for everybody.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:52):
Yeah. I have a copy of your book here, my Muslim friend, which I have read through many times. I also have your book Triumph on the Enemy’s Turf, which tells about some of the early victories over in the former Soviet Union. I mean, you’ve been doing evangelism for a long time. What are some of the greatest memories and greatest victories that you’ve experienced? And then what are some of the greatest challenges that you’ve faced in ministry?
Evangelist Peter Youngren (17:24):
Although that’s very nice, you obviously are in this work yourself. That’s why you ask us good questions, Daniel. But to me, not to another person name is, oh, I saw this person who was paralyzed in a wheelchair or carry it in. That will be the greatest thing. And that is a great thing. I’m not taken away from that. But to me, our greatest victories have been on the occasions where we have gone to a, not just where they haven’t had a festival or a crusade before, but where there are so few Christians that you really couldn’t do it. And we have seen a great breakthrough in a place like that that I consider the highlights where we were allowed to go in somehow got the permit because you always got to work with the politicians and the police to get the permit. And we’re able to do that.
(18:13):
And with our friendship approach, we kind of paved the way for any future resistance. For example, in the Muslim community, by the third, fourth night of the festival, when there are Muslims coming up, Mr. Muhammad is on the stage saying, Jesus has opened the blind eyes of my daughter here, and it can cause quite a ruckus in the community. So if I’ve already taken the leaders to dinner, I’ve already spoken with them, it gives me that opening. So I consider the greatest, I’m thinking of Kuta Pakistan, which is right on the border of Afghanistan where we had an enormous campaign and several like that in Burma. Some places where the total number of Christians, if you count every Anglican, every Catholic in these big cities will be three, 400. And where we see tens of thousands of people come, that got considered great. Now, the greatest challenges have been when we, for some reason, maybe it was a time limitation or whatever limitation, we didn’t maybe communicate adequately with people about the religions.
(19:18):
So we’ve been stopped, like I was in one city in Indonesia. We had, according to the chief of believe, 14 death threats against me personally. I have no way to verify. He was showing them to me, but they were in the Indonesian language. It was a here, 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s why I know it was 14 because he counted them out for me. And of course then they say, we have to cancel your permit for your own safety. And it’s very hard to argue with that because I’m saying I’m willing to go, you don’t have to cancel it for me.
(19:51):
You don’t know whether they’re playing a game with you or whether in that case it probably was actual threats, some of those things. Because I hate to waste the partner’s money. So we have already advertised, we have the stadium, we have the printing. We’ve already spent a lot of money as you know, spend that upfront. And so then suddenly you are faced with these kind of challenges. I find that very frustrating. But my partners, I mean this happens rarely. And our partners have been very understanding. I try to tell ’em the truth. Listen, in our kind of work one time Paul had to escape over the wall and a ladder. So it’s not a defeat just because we have to chased out of town, which happens rarely. But it does happen maybe once every five, six years. So our partners have been very good in understanding on the risk with the work that we,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:48):
Amen. Well, if someone is listening and they want to partner with your ministry, or if someone maybe wants to attend your school of evangelism in Kenya, how can they find out more information about you? What’s your website?
Evangelist Peter Youngren (21:06):
Our website, like everyone peter youngin.org, and there’s phone numbers there that takes some people to what we call the Grace Prayer Center. But this information there, including what we call the Global Evangelism Institute, just to paint a picture of that, we have purchased a very nice facility. There’s even a nice swimming pool there, but I don’t promote that a lot. It just came with the property already. And our Bible school assessment, there’s students from all over East Africa, they’re already, they’re studying a two year program. So when we invite people international to come, they come for eight weeks of studies where we give some very key courses for evangelists and they study some of them side by side with the African students and some will be separate. And then at the end of that, we’re saying if you want to test your own wings, so to speak, you say, I feel a call of God.
(22:00):
We will set you up, we will help you. We’ll facilitate you with a pastor or a group of pastors to have an outreach campaign and connection with a local church. And we’re not going to send them out in the booty, so to speak, and they can test it. I’m a firm believer that theory is very good, seminars are good, but when somebody experiences Jesus Christ working through their eyes, their hands touching people and they see a miracle that changes a life. Many people come with me and 20 years later I meet them and I say, now, when you were with me in such and such situation, what do you remember? Or they say, I remember the time when you sent us out on some street evangelism and this mother brought her the death boy and I prayed. And Jesus healed the, that’s what they remember the most. They don’t remember all the Americans in our meeting. And that’s okay. They remember Jesus working with them. That’s the experience I want to give to people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:07):
Well, one of my memories from Goma was we got to go to a Pygmy village. I think you and I went and minister to the Pygmies, gave them some food to be a blessing to them because they’re very hunted there and you preach Jesus to the pygmies. I remember it was a very short sermon, which is appropriate for Pygmies, but it was a great experience, something they should
Evangelist Peter Youngren (23:34):
Explain to you, the audience that Pygmys are kind of short people. So I remember that very well because there was a very, their plight, I remembered well, they were poor people, very poor and suffered a lot. Of course within their culture there’s racism in every culture and the pygmies are kind of looked down upon, and I always like to root for the underdog. So I’m glad we could maybe be a little small blessing to them in some way that day.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:07):
Yeah. Well, pastor Peter, I honor you for your many years of dedication, serving Jesus and proclaiming Jesus to on save people around the world. What a great impact your ministry has had in so many lives. And I want to thank you again for giving me your great staff member, Jessica, she has become a great wife, and you actually performed our wedding ceremony. And so we have many wonderful memories. Jessica really greatly enjoyed her time working with your ministry and you’ve had a big impact on our lives, and I’m very grateful for you. So thank you.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (24:49):
Well, let me just respond by saying that Jessica was a great blessing. She was a general, I mean, when she took charge of something, she took charge of it. I’m sure you ever seen much blessing in many ways from her, but also in that area. And so she is, I always think very fondly about what a blessing she was. And then I want to say I rejoice, Danny, when I see you post something on Facebook someplace in the world where you are, it brings great joy to my heart. So God bless you and thank you for this opportunity to share with your listeners.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:24):
Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Evangelist Peter Youngren (25:26):
Thank you, brother.