1 877-431-4276Church Planting in North America | Gary Smith
Gary Smith is a church planter in one of the most difficult mission fields in the world, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. He is church planting and raising up other church planters. He is the author of From Dying to Dangerous. Today we talk about the secrets of effective church planting.
Buy Gary Smith’s Book: From Dying to Dangerous: https://amzn.to/3N7uZM0
Learn more about Gary Smith and his ministry: http://churchplantingpathway.com/
Summary:
- Pastor Gary Smith is the church planting director with Alliance New England, and he is working to plant 100 new churches in New England by 2033.
- Smith is using a five-step church planting pathway to multiply disciples: (1) Follow, (2) Multiply, (3) Team, (4) Scale, and (5) Health.
- A key part of Smith’s strategy is to “listen, listen, listen” to the Holy Spirit and to the person they are speaking with, rather than just focusing on what to say. This allows them to tailor their message and approach.
- Smith has seen churches transformed from stagnant to soul-winning by helping them shift to a focus on making disciples and multiplying, rather than just on launching new services.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:20):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today, I have Pastor Gary Smith with me. He is a church planter and he has recently published a brand new book called From Dying to Dangerous. Pastor Gary, thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast.
Pastor Gary Smith (00:43):
Daniel, so great to be with you today and just thanks for this opportunity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:48):
Well, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing for Jesus.
Pastor Gary Smith (00:55):
Thank you, Daniel. I currently serve as the church planting director with Alliance New England, which is with the Christian Missionary Alliance. And the territory that God has given to me are the six states of New England, typically listed as some of the most lost, most unreached states in the United States. And that’s exactly why we ask God to bring us here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:18):
You’re right in the middle of the mission field here in the United States. Absolutely. And it’s amazing going and ministering on the East Coast. It is in many ways a post-Christian area, very secular. And so what response have you been seeing as you minister in that part of the United States?
Pastor Gary Smith (01:39):
So we have been seeing a great response. When I came here, we had seen the district here, Alliance New England dropped from 80 some churches down to 50. And the district superintendent that was new said, “We believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding us into a new vision.” And so he cast a vision that the Alliance of England would double its amount of churches in New England in the next 10 years. And people were like, “That’s kind of crazy.” But I said, “I want to take that on. I believe that the Holy Spirit can do that. He can give us power to witness for him and about Christ.” And so we took this role on and we have seen God’s spirit work. The Lord of the harvest is faithful. And the thing is, Daniel, when people look at New England, they’ll say it’s hard. The people are hard, but God has been working here.
(02:30):
And so the great news is, is the Holy Spirit, when he is powerfully giving you power to witness and share about Christ, you can be anywhere, just anywhere. And so here we are, we’re seeing a harvest. We lead all of our church planters to be in the harvest. And now we have many, many planters here now.
(02:52):
We are going to more than double the amount of our churches here in less than five years, not just 10 years, but five years. And so Lord, the harvest is granting us leaders right and left here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:01):
Yeah. I saw on your website that one of the goals is to plant a hundred new churches before 2033. And so there’s a variety of different ministries around the world that are really focusing on that date, 2033, because it is the 2000 year anniversary of when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended up into heaven, and then the birth of the original church. And so I think it’s really cool that you’ve picked that as one of the dates you’re aiming towards. And tell me what is the strategy that you’re using to plant a hundred new churches?
Pastor Gary Smith (03:43):
So we’re trying to follow Jesus and his strategies because he has the best ones. And so the way we began, Daniel, is we watched Jesus meeting those fishermen and he saw something in their life, of course. And he said, “Follow me and I’ll make you fisher admit.” And so we designed our church planting system here to meet people the way that Jesus met them and to call them out. And what’s so interesting, Daniel, is that the church planting systems across North America for the most part have used these assessment systems that look for qualities and characteristics of church planters, nine to 11 of them typically. And I said, it seemed like Jesus way is that he called people out, he recognized characteristics in these leaders, and then he told them what he wanted them to be about, and then he invested in them. And so in our church planning pathway, what we do here in New England, that’s the only district in the Christian Missionary Alliance that’s doing it this way, by the way, is that we … I’ll meet a guy in a coffee shop and the Holy Spirit will say to me, “You need to call him out.
(04:59):
” And I’ve never met him before. And I’ll call him out and say, “Look, tell me about what you think about Jesus or about you thinking about sharing Jesus.” And they’ll be like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, tell me. ” And I had a guy say at a concert the other day, he said, “Well, I’ve led several people to the Lord at my recovery house that I’m now in. ” I said, “Perfect. You have the perfect characteristic of what I’m looking for. ” And so anyway, this is kind of the strategy that we’re walking here in New England and we are seeing God so at work. It’s just myself and my wife part-time. And we are now walking with … By this summer, we’ll have 35 church planners that are going to be in the harvest. We only have 50 churches. And so we are really seeing the move and we’re actually having to slow down our process just a little bit because we’re so advancing.
(05:47):
But it’s pretty exciting what God is doing here with us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:49):
Wow. I saw in your bio that you’re originally from Canada. My wife is actually Canadian, so we love ministering in Canada and you are working to plant churches in Canada. What are the similarities or differences between what you’ve done in Canada and then New England?
Pastor Gary Smith (06:12):
What’s so interesting is that the United States and Canada are very much alike when you come north to south. So here we are in New England and the northern part of Canada that’s north of us is Quebec. I mean, people don’t realize that one of the most unreached people groups in the world are the Kibekua people. When we went there as a church planter, 0.3% of them were evangelical Christian. Now that number jumped up a bit because there’s been some great harvesting going on there, but Canada is different just like the US is different. When you go with prairie people, you find people that have spiritual backgrounds, religious backgrounds like Mennonites, this kind of groups. When they immigrated and came out, they brought something with them. But the people on the East and West Coast of Canada, just like the people on the East and West Coast of the United States are much greater, there’s a much greater need for the gospel and for harvesting in these places because there’s so few followers of Christ.
(07:06):
Even in the state of Vermont, there are nearly 50 communities still today that have no evangelical church at all in that state. And there’s not that big of a state, not that
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:15):
Many people. My wife is from Alberta, which is very similar to where I live in Tulsa, Oklahohoma. There’s a lot of Christians there, a lot of great churches. And I really, I feel like what God wants to have happen, both in Canada and the United States, is that the middle of the country where you have these great churches, if they could get a missionary vision to send people and to pray for the church planning efforts on both coasts, we could really see a revival in our nations.
Pastor Gary Smith (07:50):
I mean, I fully agree with you. When I was in Canada, if I were going to recruit, I wanted to recruit from the Midwestern states because I find that Midwesterners for the most part are the most flexible. And you have to be flexible when you’re on the mission field. First of all, to follow the Holy Spirit and his lead in what he’s doing, because he wants to do fresh things. He wants to do new things, but you are right. If these churches where their strength would say, “Let’s shift our resources.” I was so encouraged when I was writing my book, I found a church that, hey, they’ve shifted and now 50% of their resources are all going into the harvest now. And for an existing church, that’s a tough call for them to make. That’s going to really change the paradigm in what they’re doing.
(08:35):
But if we have more churches think that way, man, we could see a much greater harvest with the resources flowing in the harvest field.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:41):
Amen. Well, tell me a little bit about your book. It’s called From Dying to Dangerous: A Radical New Pathway for Churches to Reignite Kingdom Culture. And you talk in the book about how 1135 churches close their doors every single week, which is a horrible tragedy. I go down the street sometimes and you’ll see a beautiful building that used to be a church and now it has closed, it’s dead, it’s dying. And that’s not what God wants. God wants the kingdom of God to keep evangelizing and to keep growing and to never step back, but to always be going forward. So tell me a little bit about what revelation God has given you in this book from Dying to Dangerous.
Pastor Gary Smith (09:30):
Yeah. So just like you said, I start out trying to ring a clarion bell and say, “Look, everyone, we have got to realize how fast the church is going away in North America.” Daniels, I talk with people, I talk with pastors, they have no idea how dire it is. And in a sense, we know that God can turn this around. He totally can turn it around. But when I tell people 135 a week and we’re only planting at best, maybe 70 a week, I mean, I think that number’s a little high, but we are not coming close to matching the death that’s happening. Now, there are some great churches, by the way. Canada and the United States, there just are, but there’s very few that are really, really multiplying and advancing. And so in the book, I talk about that at first and then I say, okay, we’ve got to change the way that we go about this.
(10:26):
Organizations that are planting have got to change their strategy and their structure. And so in the book, I call churches, I call organizations, I call church plants to say, “Let me connect with you to help you to rethink how to truly see the United States as a mission field and to be shifting the way we’re going at it because with so many Americans and Canadians dying annually, and the amount of evangelism we’re doing is not even touching half of the death rate.” And so we have got to really rethink and people have got to get pretty uncomfortable, Daniel. So the book, I call people to that, to a level of discomfort to say, “Let’s listen to God together and do something different.” If our little organization of 50 churches is going to double the amount of works that we have here in just a few years, what would happen if other organizations, other denominations, other groups that love the gospel, that love the scripture would say, “What would it look like and what would it take for us to double the amount of churches we have, the amount of gospel sharing we have, the amount of souls we’re seeing saved, the number of people being baptized?” And it is not impossible.
(11:38):
Mark 9:23, Jesus said, “If you can believe all things are possible to him that believeth.” Our Lord can do greater things than we even ask our thought according to the book of Ephesians. And so in the book, I say, let’s connect, let me help you, let me walk with you, or just you walk with the spirit and let him tell you, you don’t need me necessarily, but let’s change the way we’re going about it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:59):
Let’s get down into real life details. Share with us some testimonies of how you have seen churches transformed from being stagnant into soul-winning churches.
Pastor Gary Smith (12:16):
Yeah. So one of the stories that I share in the book is I was pastoring a church in Alberta, you were talking about Alberta in a community that was growing so fast, the fastest growing community in Canada, Cochran and Alberta. And our children’s minister, she asked us this question in a staff meeting. She said, “Would anyone miss our church if it were not here tomorrow?” And we were so gripped by that. And so out of that, I’m going to make a long story short, out of that, we came up with a ministry called Love Cochran. And in that love Cochran ministry, we said, “We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this community.” And it was incredible what God did with that. It actually turned in such a way, Daniel, that the community actually started calling our church asking how we were going to help the community.
(13:08):
And so now our church was being seen, but it was also in that time, Daniel, that the church … There was a time when the church first started where it was seeing a pretty good amount of evangelism. There was a great pastor named Mel Blackaby, who was the pastor, and it was some great … But since then, it hadn’t seen the kind of evangelistic efforts that we were seeing, but we were starting to see … There was a year where we had 50 people baptized in that church and they hadn’t seen anything like that in a long time in that year. And we were seeing lots of people come to Christ almost every week. Someone was coming to Christ and it was pretty exciting. And so I’m just saying that was one story. Another story I’d love to take you to is a guy named JJ.
(13:48):
He’s a guy that’s a church planner with us here in New England. I got connected with him and he would not pass the church planning assessment. He sent me a text yesterday and he said, Gary, can you send me some materials? I want to start my first Discovery Bible group. It’s one of the greatest ways we’re doing evangelism, Daniel, is through these DBGs, Discovery Bible groups. And this guy, he said, “Gary, this guy was just sold out everything against God and now he’s so hungry, Gary. Show me what I could do.
(14:16):
” Excuse me. “How can I begin walking with him?” And so he’s so excited to start this Discovery Bible group with him. Man, this guy is going to reach so many people for Christ. It’s just incredible. So we just call people in our first step in our church planning pathway. We say, “Follow Jesus and fish for men.” Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:32):
And
Pastor Gary Smith (14:32):
That’s where we begin. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:34):
And so in your book From Dying to Dangerous, you have a church planting pathway, which is a proven five-step method to multiply disciples. Can you walk us through some of those steps that you go through in order to multiply disciples?
Pastor Gary Smith (14:51):
Absolutely. And so we’ve actually made it our assessment system, just so you know, so the people that know church planting, they know that church planters do assessment. We do it step by step. And so I’m going to lead you through the steps of what the qualifiers were looking for for us to take the planter to the next step. And as we advance them, we resource them even more. And so he was faithful with little will receive more. That’s a big part of our church playing pathway concept. Here’s what we do. We say, all right, I want to make sure that you want to follow Jesus sincerely, that you are saying, I want to be about what he’s asked it to be about. And I test that out by watching them fish, fish for people. And I give them all kinds of tools. I train them in the three Ls of evangelism.
(15:34):
I can tell you about that if you want to hear about that in a minute. And we say, “But I want to make sure they’re willing to follow Jesus and fish.” When they show me that, and there’s a few other things we do with them in that step, but that is the main thing. And every one of these steps is one word and it’s made it easy for us to translate because we now translate it into multiple languages as well. So it fits our North American multicultural context super well. The second thing is we say, okay, now that you are following Jesus and you’re starting to fish for people, you’ve seen some people come to Christ, you baptized someone in the ocean last week, how awesome is that? Now here’s what we want to see. Now we want to see you multiplying disciples. So take them to the great commission.
(16:09):
Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” So I’ve asked them to take the people that they’ve led to Christ and invite them, show them how to share the gospel and how to be starting discovery Bible groups. And so we now multiply.That is our next step is multiply. And I’ll tell you, it is exciting to see these new believers sharing their faith, starting Discovery Bible groups, seeing other people come to Christ, and this is how we’re planning churches. So then we move from multiply and we say, okay, in our church planning training day that we use, it’s called Church Planning Essentials from Dynamic Church Planning International, we ask them to begin getting a vision from God. We ask them to take multiple prayer retreats to go away and hear from God. It’s a core thing that’s missing in church planting and pastoring, prayer retreats, hearing from God, what’s his vision?
(17:00):
And in our next step, we help them to build a team to match the vision. So we haven’t even talked about church service yet. Have you noticed that? Most church planting focuses on launch Sunday. Jesus didn’t ask us to focus on launch Sunday. He asked us to focus on multiplying on making disciples.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:18):
Jesus always had launched the boats.
Pastor Gary Smith (17:21):
That’s right. And so, but in this step, we help them build out the team for the vision God has given them, whether it’s to reach multiple apartment complexes in a city, whatever it is. So we help them build out that team. My wife is the best coach for that. And then we say, all right, how do we help you scale this out? Because we’re supposed to be like a city on a hill. You notice I didn’t use the word launch. I’ve actually taken that out of my vocabulary because again, people have thrown so many resources at that, that they’ve forgotten that we are to be making disciples. This is where supposed to be in the harvest. Now, it’s not that I don’t like launch Sundays in church planning. I love worship services. I love preaching. I love worship, but let’s focus on what Christ has for us.
(18:00):
So we scale it out for them. And then the last one is health. We describe health as Acts one: eight. That’s how we see a healthy church. So we’re not talking about large numbers, small numbers. We’re talking about multiplying disciples being made. How do we get more of the gospel into the city? And then how do we start multiplying that beyond? In this process, I’m asking our church planters to be raising up their next church planters that’s either going to take over their church, they’re going to go out and do it again, or they’re going to send them out. I’m asking them to raise up pastors, but I ask them to do it the same way I did it with them. Is I meet you in Panera Bread. I meet you in Dunking Donuts. I meet you wherever you are and I call you out and I say, “You want to follow Jesus and fish for people.
(18:39):
” And sometimes I start into the gospel conversation because sometimes people have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s perfect intro because they’re like, “What are you talking about? ”
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:46):
That’s awesome.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:47):
Anyway, but that’s our step-by-step strategy.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:49):
All right. So give me the five words.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:52):
Follow. Follow. Multiply.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:54):
Multiply.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:56):
Team. Aim. Team. Oh, team. Yeah. Team. And then scale. Scale. And health.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:04):
Health. Health. Wonderful. And you mentioned you have three Ls of evangelism. What are the three Ls of evangelism?
Pastor Gary Smith (19:12):
So I go about it two different ways in the book, but the one I’ll tell you about today was taught to me by a First Nations, a Canadian Indian man. Actually, he didn’t teach him, but the Spirit taught it to me because of him. So I was going up to his village as the white man to go into an Indian village and to meet this gentleman for the very first time. He was the mayor in his town. He was a pastor in his town and he was a government leader in his town amongst First Nation people. So as I’m driving up to this village, the Spirit of God whispers to me Daniel, he says, Gary, don’t talk when you get there. I’m like, “What do you mean don’t talk when I get there?” I’m a preacher, pastor. All I know how to do is talk.
(19:54):
And I said, “Lord, did you just tell me that? ” And I really sensed that the spirit was telling me not to talk. So I got to his community, I found his house and I introduced myself, of course. I mean, I had to say something, and then I just went quiet. I didn’t know about First Nation culture, Daniel, and how that was such an honoring thing to listen rather than speak all the time. But for about two and a half days, I hardly said a word. And I was at his house and he told me, he said, Gary, he said, “I’m going to work with you. ” I’m like, “Well, I’m sorry, what do you mean? We haven’t even hardly talked about working or ministry.” He said, “You’re the first white man who’s ever listened to me. ” And so the spirit put that word in my spirit about listening.
(20:40):
And I realized that in most evangelism training, we teach people what to say, but we don’t teach them how to listen, how to listen to the spirit, how to listen to the heart of the person, how to listen to the culture that they’re in. Those three Ls and listen, listen, listen to the spirit of God. You see, the Lord Jesus had around 60 plus conversations in the gospels, but they’re all unique. Some people addressed hymns, he addressed some other people. They’re all unique, all these conversations. And so I say, “If you don’t listen, how do you know what to say?” And so I love the Romans row, by the way. I love all kinds of evangelism. I love what you talked about on one of your podcasts about using the chosen for introductions to the gospel. I think that’s awesome, Daniel. But I’m just saying, if you can listen, the spirit will give you cues as to where to enter in with the gospel, as to what to share with the person, as to what they need in this moment that’ll be the door that opens their heart.
(21:39):
And so I’ve trained a lot of people in the three hours of evangelism now how to listen. And it gets you so much farther with so many more people down the road when you’re just doing cold evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:52):
I actually agree with you a lot. I think one of the most powerful tools of an evangelist is listening. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so by listening to someone, hearing about their problems, hearing about what they’re going through, hearing about their life, you show that you care. And then once you’ve earned the right to speak into their lives, then they’re much more open to hear what you have to say. So yeah, that’s really powerful. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, if you are listening and you would like to order Gary Smith’s book from Dying to Dangerous, you can find it on amazon.com and just type in from Dying to Dangerous, Gary Smith, and you can find the book. And I think it’s a great book. You should definitely go and get it. And then if someone wants to connect with you or find out more about your ministry, is there a good website that they could go to?
Pastor Gary Smith (22:49):
Yes. It’s thechurchplantingpathway.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:53):
The churchplantingpathwayway.com. And so I encourage you to connect with Pastor Gary and learn all you can from him. And just to finish up here, Pastor Gary, what word of encouragement would you give to other people who have a desire to plant a church, they want to be church planters, maybe here in the United States, maybe internationally. What would you say to those who are called to plant churches?
Pastor Gary Smith (23:24):
I would say to you, the spirit of God can empower you to be his witness and you can be his witness anywhere because it’s about what he is doing. And so he can empower you to do it and say, I would say go forth boldly and share the gospel. And I just want to say, Daniel, that I think this means to be one of the main things that we do in church planting today is sharing the gospel because there’s a harvest ready. There’s ripe fruit ready everywhere. I really believe it. And so I would say to you, go forth boldly sharing the gospel. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be timid. And the Lord will show you how to speak. The spirit said, I will give you the words. Open your mouth. I will give you the words to say. So trust him to do that. Let’s plant many, many evangelistically harvest centric churches.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:15):
Let’s just take a moment right now to pray for church planters across North America and around the world. I believe God wants us to plant hundreds and thousands and even millions of churches around the world. God is raising up his church. Dear Heavenly Father, we lift up everyone who is called to be a church planter. Lord, I pray that they would have boldness to go out and to share the gospel, to call people to you, and then to disciple people and begin to help them to get closer and closer to Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would raise up an army of church planters in New England, in North America, up in Quebec, all over the world. Lord, we pray for mighty church planters to be raised up that would have a massive impact for your kingdom in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Gary Smith (25:18):
Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:18):
One final word, Pastor Gary.
Pastor Gary Smith (25:21):
Well, Daniel, just thank you. Thanks for what you’re doing in the Ministry of Evangelism. And I just pray God will bless your work and your ministry so much, brother. And thanks for letting me be on with you. And again, if someone would like to connect with me, please do. I look forward to helping you in the harvest.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:36):
Awesome. Thank you, Pastor Gary, for being on the evangelism podcast.
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Jordan Chanin | Share Word Global Trains Local Churches in Evangelism
Jordan Chanin works for Share Word Global, the Canadian version of Gideons International. For many years they have been known for putting Bibles in the night stand in hotels around the world. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, Jordan tells us about how ShareWord Global is training local churches in evangelism. We discuss the four core skills that will help you with your outreach conversations.
Learn more about Share Word Global: https://sharewordglobal.com/ca/
Information about training local churches in evangelism: https://events.sharewordglobal.com/ca/ignite-evangelism
Summary:
Jordan Chanin works for ShareWord Global, the Canadian version of Gideons International, which has been putting Bibles in hotel rooms for over 100 years. ShareWord Global is now training local churches in evangelism, focusing on four core skills:
- Connect with people by being intentional, finding common ground, and looking for ways to serve and bless them.
- Tell your personal faith story, sharing the “before, how, and after” of how Jesus changed your life.
- Share the story of Jesus – his personal life, relationships, credentials, and the key events of his life, death, and resurrection.
- Give people God’s word, using resources like the Hope and Spark magazines, digital content, and the New Life Bible app.
ShareWord Global offers these evangelism training events for free to local churches to help equip and mobilize believers to share their faith.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jordan Chanin works for Share Word Global, the Canadian version of Gideon’s International. For many years they’ve been known for putting Bibles in the nightstand in hotels around the world. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, Jordan tells us about how Share Word Global is training local churches in evangelism. We discussed the four core skills that will help you with your outreach conversations.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:43):
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
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:05):
Daniel King. 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, a Jordan Chanin from Share Word Global. Thank you for being with me.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (01:20):
Yes indeed, Daniel. It is a huge privilege to be here. Thanks for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
Well, let’s start by looking at Share Word global. If you have ever traveled anywhere around the world and seeing a Bible in the nightstand next to your bed in the hotel, it was probably put there by a ministry called Gideons. And so Gideons has been for over a hundred years, been giving away Bibles and share Word Global has its start as the Canadian branch of Gideons.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (01:54):
Yeah, that is a perfect history lesson. That’s exactly it. We are a ministry that has had the name Sherwood Global for 13 years, but we actually carry with us an over 111 year, or actually maybe even more so by now. But anyways, over well over a hundred years of ministry experience.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:11):
That is absolutely amazing. And I love the passion that Gideon’s has for sharing Bibles all over the world. And so now the Canadian ministry has changed and rebranded to be share word global. So it sounds like you still have that same basic passion for sharing God’s word.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (02:32):
Yeah, 100%. I mean, it’s in our blood, it’s in our DNA as a ministry. We believe that the word of God will speak to the nations, that God has given us this word for all people. And so we want to do whatever we can to get the word of God into people’s hands so they can ultimately encounter Christ and receive salvation.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:51):
I saw that you have taken God’s word and put it into a really beautiful package as a magazine. And so I have it in my hand here, spark Magazine.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:04):
Yes. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:05):
Just tell us what is in Spark Magazine.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:07):
Yeah, so the Spark Magazine is actually our magazine for young people. We created it for the age group of around nine to 12 years old, although we do give it to children younger than that as well. And to be honest, a lot of adults that we give it to as well almost prefer it to the Hope Magazine, which is our other one. But
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:26):
So Hope Magazine is more for the adult,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:28):
Correct? Yes. Teenagers, adults, and plus they’re very similar magazines. The main difference is the first half. So the Spark Magazine targeted towards younger people primarily the first half contains 12 truths about God. So it starts with God created you, God loves you, you have value, but you were broken. And so we made it in a way that really speaks to children. We have little games and pictures and things that can engage a child’s imagination and also keep their attention.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:02):
Wow, that’s amazing, Jordan. So how did you get hooked up with share word global?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (04:08):
Yeah, it’s actually a really crazy story how it all worked out. So I was actually serving as an itinerant preacher in Brazil for a few years. And so God essentially led me to various churches around the country just to preach, encourage them, and it was always my heart to mobilize the church to do the work of evangelism and fulfill the great commission. That’s kind of all my sermons. Were coming back to these key themes of repentance. Of course, I believe, and I know many others, share the conviction that without repentance there will never be revival. We got to become full before the Lord and beyond that that we need to do the work that he’s called us to the Great commission. So I was doing that for a few years and it was amazing the things that God was showing me and allowing me to be a part of, but I knew that it was also quite limited and I really wanted to do something deeper and something more sustainable with the long-term.
(05:09):
And so in this process of me traveling around the country preaching at all these random churches, interdenominational Evangelical, Sherwood Global was just launching their Brazil project to open up in that country about six months after me. And so the funny thing is, of the many tens of thousands of churches in Brazil, they just so happened to visit churches that I had previously preached at being a Canadian organization. Naturally, when they went there to share about who they were and to preach at their services and people heard they’re from Canada, they said, Hey, do you know Pastor Jordan from Vancouver? And our director, he’s a Brazilian man, but he lives in Toronto, in the Toronto area right now. He said, no, I’ve never heard of Pastor Jordan Canada’s big country. I don’t know anyone from Vancouver, I’m sorry. And it happened about four times in four different states.
(06:03):
And so eventually he was like, who is this Pastor Jordan from Vancouver that everyone knows and I’ve never heard of? I need to meet this guy. Well, sure enough, one of my main partner churches in the south of Brazil, I was a preacher there, but I was also doing a men’s ministry there. They happened to Sherwood Global, planned a visit to that church the same day that I was there. And during that time, the director, his meeting got canceled with the lead pastor. He had nothing to do now for the afternoon and he was a little disappointed and he said, I guess I’ll go meet with some other people and connect at this church. And then a pastor said, Hey, if you’re available right now, I have a friend from Canada who I want to introduce you to. His name is Pastor Jordan from Vancouver.
(06:46):
I think it’d be great for you, get to know him. And he said, that must be why I came here. So we met, he was surprised to find out I was a young single guy. He was expecting some old retired, married guy traveling around the world, living his days out. And so we grabbed dinner, we talked, he shared about the ministry, what they do. I said, man, that’s literally what I’m doing just without the resources and the backing that you guys have. And he said, well, let’s pray about it and maybe in the future we can work together. After eight months of talking and praying and seeing where our ministries were going, the timing worked out perfectly. And I started with Share Word Global at the beginning of 2024.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:26):
Outstanding. And one of the things that Share Word Global does is ignite evangelism training events in local churches.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (07:36):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:36):
And so let’s talk about that a little bit. What happens at one of these Ignite Evangelism training events?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (07:44):
These are some of the most exciting things that we get to be a part of because we love to serve the local church. We exist to equip and mobilize the local church to evangelize. And so we host these training events. They’re training in relational evangelism or a conversational evangelism. We call them our Ignite events because we want to gather not only a local church specifically, but also other churches in the area, anyone who wants to come and grow in their ability to share the gospel, we invite them. And so we partner with a local church, they host it, we get the word out there, the people come and we begin to go through a three hour interactive seminar about relational evangelism. And so yeah, we have some of our materials here with us today just to show what our workbook is actually that we go through to accomplish what we would consider the basics of sharing the gospel in your personal relationships.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:40):
So if there’s a pastor of a local church that would be interested in having evangelism training, what would be a good way for them to find out more information?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (08:52):
Yeah, well definitely go on our website. It’s www.sharewordglobal.com, and you can be directed to whatever area of interest you have that our ministry offers. And I would also say get in touch with me because I work in Canada and United States, but also we work in 48 countries around the world and we’re actively serving churches, thousands of churches every year in those countries. And my email isJordan@sharewordglobal.com. And just to clarify it’s word and not world, I know a lot of people think Share World global, but it’s actually share word as in the word of God, global.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:34):
That’s wonderful. Alright, so let’s look at this literature, the training worksheet that you would give out at one of your evangelism training things. And so you start out by looking at different levels of conversation, four different levels. Talk us through what those levels are and how that would apply to witnessing.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (09:58):
So that’s the model that we work with. It’s ultimately, we know a lot of people don’t feel called to preach on the streets or whenever someone brings up the word evangelism,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:08):
Get a bullhorn and go out in the street and
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (10:10):
Shout at people. That’s only for the advanced lessons. No, just kidding, just kidding. But a lot of people have that
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:16):
Fear, that approach kind of turns people off often. Exactly. They think of evangelism and they think of someone who’s obnoxious, who’s out on the street yelling at people and they’re like, I could never confront people like that.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (10:30):
Totally. And a lot of people discount their ability to evangelize because of that. They have that picture in their mind or the extremely extroverted person who goes out and they can strike up conversation with anyone and fearlessly talk about Jesus. They say, that’s not me. That’s okay. That’s not most people. Most people feel shy or maybe even insecure sometimes about their ability to share their faith. And so we want to make it really simple and we use this relational conversational model. We acknowledge that there’s four main levels of a conversation within a relationship. So it usually starts with small talk, very superficial, how’s the weather today? What about those gas prices? Just establishing a point of contact. You might talk about things like scores on a Super Bowl game or something like that. Things that aren’t too controversial, not too personal, just kind of keeping the conversation going. And that’s really where all relationships start. It’s just that point of contact and having an interaction with a fellow human being. Next up, we want to go to the personal talk. So this is when you take the small talk and you make it a bit more about the individual, their feelings, their desires, what’s going on in their life. And that’s really when the relationship begins to take root and there’s a more meaningful something.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:56):
So an example of small talk would be, how’s the weather? Or how are the Edmonton Oilers doing something like that where you’re talking about weather or sports. And then personal talk would be Tell me about your family.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (12:10):
Yeah, yeah, totally. It could be that. And you can also connect the personal talk to the small talk. How about the weather? It’s really hot today and the person says, oh yeah, no, I hate that. It’s so hot out today. Oh, okay, well that could open the door to a personal question then. Oh, what’s your favorite type of weather? What makes you like that more than that? And then you can go from there to where would you like to live if you could live anywhere. And you start to know them on a more personal level. So we’re trying to find where’s the point of contact and what doors is God opening for us to go deeper in the relationship?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:47):
Alright, what’s the next level?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (12:48):
Next level is spiritual. And this is often a step of faith. This is when you generally have some level of personal connection with the individual. There’s a degree of trust that’s been established. And then we want to talk about things that pertain to those bigger questions in life. Spiritual matters. It could be what do you believe, what faith background do you come from? Even if it’s no faith at all, or what they would say is no faith. Or it could be things like what gives you hope in life? What gets you excited about your future and what do you think life is about? The things that go beyond the day-to-day and kind of touch on the meta level of life and sort of reveal what people’s core convictions actually are.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:36):
Then you listen to them talk about where they are spiritually and that what you hear them say will probably help you in going into the fourth stage of talk. Yeah,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (13:49):
Exactly. Which
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:50):
Is
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (13:51):
Gospel. We ultimately are going in the direction of the good news of Jesus Christ, and we want to get there at the pace of the relationship. So it’s really easy to jump right there and confront people with the gospel and give them an ultimatum more or less. But we know that many cases that doesn’t work in our favor. So if you can do it in five minutes, great. If you can do it in 50 years, that might just be the pace of that person’s heart being open to Christ in you. But the gospel conversation is where we make the full explicit presentation of what it means to know Jesus and to receive him as your savior.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:35):
So having conversations with people is a very biblical strategy. We find many different conversations that Jesus had with people. What are some of the principles that you pull out of the different conversations that Jesus had with people?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (14:50):
Yeah. Well, I think the main one is what you just touched on, different conversations. He related to everyone at their level. He didn’t have a prepackaged one size fits all, gospel summary, but he got to know the person and even through the revelation of the Holy Spirit to have a deeper insight into what that person’s needs were. And so one example I love of course is the woman at the well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:18):
Yeah, from John chapter four.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (15:19):
Yeah. Just a famous example of the compassion of Jesus, the boldness of Jesus, but also his willingness to engage with this woman, with what she understood. And being a Samaritan woman and having their own religious system and the huge tension and division with the Jews, Jesus was willing to go there and to not only hear what she said, but also to guide her in the ways that she was misunderstanding and point her towards himself, but the true Messiah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:50):
And then Jesus really went through these different stages of talk. He started
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (15:55):
With
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:56):
Small talk. He said, Hey, would you give me a drink? He’s sitting by a well, so what would be more natural? Then say, give me a drink. And then he goes into personal talk and says, go call your husband. And then he has this word of knowledge. You have no husband, the man you’re with is not your husband. And then he takes them into spiritual talk, talking about living water. And she says, where can I find this living water? And then she says, I’ve heard that Messiah is coming, and he reveals himself to her, says I who speak to you, am he?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (16:26):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:27):
And so he takes it to the gospel.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (16:31):
That’s exactly it. That’s perfect. And we’re really not reinventing the wheel by setting things up the way they are. We’re just using the example of Jesus and the way that God has created us as humans, how to truly get to someone’s heart in the timeframe that we don’t know how long it will take, but we trust that God as we’re seeking him, will lead us there and show us which steps to take along the way.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:55):
And so how did Jesus differ in some of his other conversations? What did he do differently?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (17:01):
Yeah. Well, again, back to the point that every person’s coming from a different place. And so we think about the religious leaders who should have been the people who would recognize him first. This is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for who was spoken enough in the scriptures, but they didn’t. They were perhaps the hardest in heart. And Jesus was confronting their hardness. And you can imagine a modern example of that would be people in the church who have grown up in the church, they can recite Bible verses and you’re not convinced that they actually know who Jesus is. There’s no fruit. There’s no passion to live for Christ’s glory. But there’s resistance, perhaps hostility. Sometimes we have to confront those things with the truth. And we don’t always flip tables or whip people with cords as Jesus did, but we do have to know this conversation’s going to start at a different point. Whereas the Samaritan woman, she’s coming from another place, Nathaniel a guy who is a doubter, and Jesus just makes an open invitation for him to follow. But he also speaks to something that’s true in Nathaniel that other people weren’t picking up on. Jesus knew that this is a man in whom there is no deceit. And Jesus had some revelation from the Spirit, of course, to show him things about Nathaniel that he was like, how do you know this? That’s crazy. But yeah, there’s a bunch of different examples.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:34):
How do you know this? I’ve been telling everyone I never lie.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (18:37):
I know and here they are doubting me. No. But yeah, Jesus was patient. I think he took the time to know the people and meet them where they were. He was never rushing through a gospel presentation, but he was very clear in that he wanted to get there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:54):
And then you have the example of the sinner in the sycamore tree. Zach,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (18:59):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:00):
Who’s up in the tree. Jesus looks at him and calls him by name and just says, Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house today.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:07):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:08):
The crowd was stunned because they knew that he was a thief and that he had been overcharging people on their taxes. And so they wanted Jesus to rebuke him, to wave his finger at him and say, you good for nothing thief. You’re going to hell. But that’s not what Jesus did. He says, Hey, I’m coming over to your house. Let’s have dinner together.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:27):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:28):
The Bible doesn’t really give us much of the first part of their conversation, but Jesus must have said something significant because by the end, Zach Kieus completely repented and said, if I’ve ever stolen anyone from anyone, I’m going to give it back four times.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:44):
Yeah,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:45):
Totally. And so Jesus just showed he cared by listening to him and eating with him. And I think sometimes just having a meal with someone is a great way to be able to open up a deeper conversation.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (20:01):
I’m a huge believer in that, and I think that in this generation, specifically in Western countries, which are individualistic, young people are so disconnected and they’re just dying to have a loving community around them, but they don’t know what that looks like anymore. And I do believe hospitality will save the West that the more that Christians see that and practice it and live it, which is uncomfortable, it’s risky, it’s costly. You don’t know when you invite strangers to your table or people from very different walks of life. It’s going to be an investment emotionally, financially and whatnot. But the more that we are able to do this, the glory of God based on the commands and the guidance that God gives us in scripture, hospitality will win the hearts of those that no one else is winning. Right now,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:00):
You have identified several different spiritual conditions
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:04):
To
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
Look for in relationships. Talk us through some of those different spiritual conditions that we might find people in.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:12):
So that’s one thing. We use kind of a grid of six main categories of people that we will encounter as we’re sharing the gospel as we’re going through life and opening up to these spiritual conversations. The first and the most distant would be the disbeliever. The person who understands Christianity to a degree, they’ve heard about the gospel, but they are hostile against it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:40):
So this might be the hardcore atheist, someone who is actively, maybe they were in a church when they were younger
Speaker 5 (21:48):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:49):
They’ve decided that it’s all hogwash and they’re sometimes very bitter and just say, I hate God and I don’t even believe he exists.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:58):
Yeah. It could be that, and it could also be the softer agnostic who says, you know what? That’s great. I had some time in the church and I realized it’s too narrow. It’s just not for me. And I don’t think it will ever be Jesus, but you, we get a lot of that in today’s culture as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:17):
Yeah, that sounds very Canadian too.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (22:20):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Very Canadian and very postmodern.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:24):
You do you I’ll do me. Just don’t bother me. Definitely don’t
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (22:27):
Proselytize. Keep it to yourself. And so the disbeliever often seems like the most difficult person to reach, and many times they can be. But also we’ve seen with enough sharing of the gospel that oftentimes it just takes attention, care, and love, and the hard exterior begins to come down and they realize that you’re not against them. The people we maybe in the past who they’ve known. So that’s the first person that we talk about. The next is the doubter. This is the person who’s maybe a bit more open-minded, but they have so many ideas contrary to Jesus and the gospel, that they just have too many questions, too many unresolved things in their own experience of life and faith and the teachings of Christianity just don’t make sense to them. So yeah, they’ll talk about it, but it’s always from a position of trying to find the holes, trying to see how Christianity might not be the way. And I really like these people because they’re oftentimes very honest. They’re not dismissive like the disbeliever, but they’re also not just going to believe anything you say.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:42):
Okay,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (23:43):
Yeah. What’s next? Then we have the observer, and I think we see a lot of these people, well, we used to see a lot of these people in our churches physically, but now we see them more online and more in those conversation spaces. Maybe Christian clubs and universities or Christian events that happen in public, they’ll go and watch because interested or they’ll listen to sermons. They’ll even listen to worship music online. I see that a lot, atheist or agnostics that just feel this draw towards what Christians offer as far as teaching and music and all that. And they’re interested,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:22):
And they may even label themselves as Christian without actually believing in a lot of the things that Christians would typically believe in.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (24:31):
I would say. So yeah, that would be an observer who’s a bit more plugged in where they feel like they belong to the Christian community. So they identify with the title, but it could even be someone who identifies as a Muslim or a Buddhist, but they say, I’m really interested in what this Christianity stuff is all about, and I think I’ll stick around and learn, but don’t expect me to get up after an altar call or anything like that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:59):
And then your next level would be the seeker.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (25:02):
Yes, the seeker. And this is the individual who is noticing that there’s something missing in their life and they’re trying to find whatever this higher power or experience or truth is that can satisfy. And they’ve often gone through a variety of other belief systems or even substance use things to try to connect them to something bigger than themselves.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:30):
So maybe they spent some time believing in astrology or crystals. I’ve met a lot of people like that. They’ve tried out different that they’d say, I’m very spiritual. I don’t really know what’s out there, but I want to believe, and I’m very spiritual.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (25:47):
That would be a person. But the seeker for us would also be someone who’s a bit more intentional about going in the direction of, tell me more about this Jesus. Because there can be people who have that disposition who are more doubters observers, spiritual, not religious, but the seeker. They’re going after it. They’re putting in the work. And I love to disciple those kind of people because they’re coming at you with so many real honest things and they truly want to get to the bottom of it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:21):
And then you have the believer.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (26:24):
So that would be the person who knows that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, the person who has received and seen their desperate need for his forgiveness of their sins and is alive in Christ, filled with the spirit and living a life that is in the direction of glorifying God. Now we know there’s a whole spectrum of perhaps the most lukewarm, I don’t know where the cutoff line is, only God does to the most zealous and the most committed, but the believer is the person that we understand is a brother or sister in Christ who we will live together forever with.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:06):
And then your final stage is the disciple.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (27:09):
Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:11):
Describe an ideal disciple.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (27:14):
It’s interesting that we kind of separate the believer and the disciple because in many senses, the believer might be going in the direction of unbelief, and they’re not really that invested in their faith, but they still believe they’re still in it. But the disciple is the person who we see that is actively daily desiring the apprenticeship of Jesus to become more like Christ. And so this is the person who sees well, who reads the word of God, who builds their life on the foundation of God’s truth, and they want to live out what the word asks of us. And so an ideal disciple to me is just simply someone who’s humble, who you can tell they’ve died to their selves and they want to learn and grow to be more like Christ. It’s very simple. It has a million implications, but that’s just the core essence of what we’re hoping for.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:11):
As I’m thinking about these different spiritual conditions, I really remember the parable that Jesus told about the farmer who went out to sow seed in different fields. And there’s a lot of parallels there. Some of the seed fell on hard ground. Maybe that’s the disbeliever, and Satan is coming and stealing the seeds.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (28:33):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:33):
Then some people, there’s been thorns, so they’re like a doubter, but these thorns have grown up around them and caused these doubts. But then you have the good ground, and this is someone who might be a seeker. And then with the good ground, you have some that produces 30 some, 60, some a hundred fold. And so you have those different levels of people that are responding to the gospel, becoming a believer, then becoming a disciple.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (29:05):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say that’s a really, really good parallel for sure. And we see it going beyond that too, that even in the believer’s life, God could be depositing seeds of the kingdom, but in that stage of life, they’re just closed off. And that truth or that calling from the Lord will not bear fruit even though they’re a believer. And then the other disbeliever could actually have gone through a season where they’re so broken by something or something massive changed in their lives, and now they’re open to this idea of God, and then the seed comes at the right time. It could be you could be me, it could be anyone listening to this podcast that God uses to see a disbeliever become a full fledged disciple very quickly because they were ready. And I think that’s why we have to be ready no matter who we’re meeting on this scale or these categories, just be ready to scatter the seed. That I think is the biggest takeaway.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:03):
God doesn’t call us to grow the harvest. He calls us to be farmers, to go out and scatter seed
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:09):
And be surprised at the growth. It is a miracle. We plant someone else waters
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:15):
And then God gives the
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:16):
Growth and we’re just amazed by it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:18):
Alright, and so then there are four core skills
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:22):
That
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:23):
You teach that help people with their outreach conversations. So first you want to connect with people, then you want to tell your faith story, then you want to share Christ’s story, and then you want to give them God’s word. So let’s talk through these four core skills and how you help people to develop in each of those skills.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:44):
Sure. Yeah. So the first skill connect, very simple. We go with what’s called the grid model. It’s kind of like who are the people that you are already connected to and them personally, you know them by name, they’re probably people you see on a weekly basis, maybe biweekly at minimum. And we want you to know who these people are who don’t know Christ, so that you can see the way that God has intentionally put you in their lives. I find it really interesting. There’s often a lot of people that we know that we’ve never really considered them as someone that God wants us to share the gospel with. I’ve been a young adults pastor and I worked with a lot of university students, and a lot of them never really saw their classmates or especially their teachers as someone that they could ever share the gospel with. Why would God want me to share with them? Maybe my youth pastor or someone else will do it. A Christian club leader will do it, but me, it’s like, yeah, God has given you a grid. He’s given you favor, he’s given you trust, and it’s our responsibility to use that, of course, to lead people to Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:59):
So your first skill is to connect with people. How do you recommend that people start to connect with people?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (32:05):
Yeah, the central skill with that is be intentional. Know the people, identify the people and be intentional with them. We also have some questions for people to get started if they think, okay, well yes, I know them. Yes, we talk. So what’s next? Well, what do you have in common with them? Begin to build a more connected, deeper relationship based on things you can do together. Shared experiences, how can you pray for them? That’s another question. Do you actually know what’s going on in their lives? To the degree that you can pray specific prayers for them, whether it’s for their family, for their work, for their mental health. There’s so many ways. The next is how can you serve them? God has given all of us gifts and abilities, and we are called to use that to bless others. And so look for ways that you can go out of your way to bless them. Finally, what can you give not only tangible assets, but also what gifts? What spiritual strengths has God given you that you can share in their lives, ultimately leave their lives in a better place because of your investment? We would say those four simple questions. If you can answer all of those and act on them with any individual on your grid, you’ll be in better shape than most people. As far as building a healthy, intentional relationship.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:33):
When I think about connecting with people, I think of some of our friends who live here in Tulsa, who are from Afghanistan. We had a lot of refugees from Afghanistan that came here, 800 different families. And so we started to develop relationships with some of them. And when they first came as refugees, we were helping them to find jobs and get driver’s license. And there was one girl who was pregnant, so my wife was helping take her to the doctor for her appointments, for her baby. And so we were looking for ways, what did we have in common with them? How can we pray for them? How can we serve them? And then looking for ways to give to them. And so building that connection. And in these Afghans, they’re all Muslim,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (34:19):
But
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:19):
We’re looking for ways to connect with them,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (34:22):
Putting yourself out there. And it’s actually beautiful because Muslim people who move to North America, they’re often shocked by how individualistic we are and seemingly disconnected, and they’re used to a very warm, very familial culture. And so when they can come here and see that we as members of the church, as part of the body of Christ are willing to go outside of our comfort zone, our cultural norm, and be like a family to them, it’s amazing. It completely surprises them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:58):
The second skill that you teach is tell your story. How do you help people to tell their gospel story?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (35:06):
So you can imagine you’re deepening your relationship from small talk. Personal talk is getting to the spiritual level. People seem to be open to hearing about what you believe, what gives you hope in life. And so we want to equip people to show the proof is in the pudding. We don’t just believe in God because it makes sense intellectually, but we actually have a story. We have experiences with God that verify that he is real and that he is worth believing in. So we make it really simple for people to share their story. First, we talk about this big idea. What are you trying to convey to this person? We talk about telling your story. For most of us, we’re trying to show that there was a point in my life where I did not know Christ or I was far from Christ. And through some means I was able to get to know him personally, and he changed everything.
(36:01):
So God changed my life. That’s kind of the big idea we want people to know. So we break that down into three different stages. The first stage is your life before Christ. So why did you need Christ? What was your life like? What major problem or challenge or confusion were you experiencing? And then we give people a list of words to help describe that in one word. What would you describe your life as before Christ? Secondly, how did you come to Christ? We all have a story of the time or day or process by which we knew that Jesus is Lord. And so how did that happen? We give people again, a list of words and small sentences to describe how you came to know Jesus. And then thirdly, what difference does he make today? So what is your life like now because of Christ?
(36:55):
And then one word to describe that. So once people choose this word or short sentence for each of those stages, they can break down their story into honestly a 10 or 15 second thing, which is enough to grab people’s attention and allow people to identify with you. For me, I say my life before Christ was addicted. I had so many addictions, so many things going on, but I came to know Christ through a crisis as a result of that crisis, and me realizing that Jesus is Lord and him saving my life today, my life is pure. It is just full of the purity of God. And those sound like three pretty disparate things like addiction, crisis, purity that doesn’t really add up. And so that 10, 15 second presentation can open the door into a longer development of each of those stages and telling the full story if you have enough time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:51):
Yeah, I really like the idea of telling your story because no one can argue with it. It’s your story.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (37:58):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:59):
If you give them a verse or a fact, then there’s room for argument. But you say, this is what happened to me.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
That’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:06):
Your experience. Your life is what you know. And so you are able to share with people in a way that there maybe won’t be so argumentative. And then one of the things that you say that I really like is that it’s better to spend most of the time actively listening to the other person in order to understand. And so I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make when they’re witnessing is they get this script and they have these stories going to share and they just jump into it. And it’s actually a really powerful technique to listen to people, to hear where they’re at, and then allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in what you say to their situation.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (38:51):
Yeah, that’s perfect. And that’s definitely the deeper, more intentional level that we want people to get to. So you have your basic story, how you would tell it. Generally speaking to any group, if you were just asked on a whim, tell it. Okay, here’s my main points. However, we know that our stories are far more complex and beautiful, but also there’s a lot more going on that we could share about. And so if you know have a variety of struggles in your past that Christ set you free from, or Christ healed for you, and you’re meeting someone who’s really struggling in one of those particular areas, it wouldn’t necessarily be the first one that you’d share. But you also have experience there too. Well, God just opened the door for you to show how the same way that he met your needs, he can also meet theirs.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:40):
And when you listen to someone, you’re actually earning the right to be heard.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (39:48):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:48):
Here in the United States, we have the first amendments, which gives you the right to free speech,
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (39:54):
Which
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:54):
Is great, but just because you speak doesn’t mean anyone’s going to listen to you. Often they don’t want to listen to
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:00):
You,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:01):
But by listening to them, then you earn the right to be heard. When you start to share your story, you show you care for people. Someone said that no one cares how much until they know how much you
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:12):
Care.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:12):
And so by listening, you are showing that you care about their story, and you earn the right then to share your story and what God has done in your life.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:21):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s why I think this relational conversational model, it’s so essential for every follower of Christ because that’s built into it. To have a relationship, you have to hear people, you have to know who they are, what they want, what makes them happy, what gives them what makes them feel fearful. And when you get the accumulation of all this knowledge and connection with them, you’re way better equipped to talk about Christ rather than a really professional summarized portrayal of Jesus. You’re going based on the individual’s needs.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:02):
Alright, then skill number three, you want to share Christ’s story?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:07):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:07):
What does that look like?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:09):
Yeah, so more important than our own story is of course the story of Jesus because we wouldn’t have a story if it wasn’t for him. We wouldn’t have life if it wasn’t for him. So how do we become good at sharing Jesus? The big thing
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:22):
For, I really like the story of Philip, the evangelist in Acts chapter eight, when he was with the Samaritans. It says he preached Christ to them and then he meets the Ethiopian eunuch on the road. And again, the story specifically points out that he spoke about Christ to him.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:40):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:40):
So you start with your story, but then there has to come a time where you bring Christ into this story.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:47):
Yeah, exactly. Who is this Jesus that saved you? And we really want to make it a personal telling of Jesus that we’re not just communicating theological truths or summarizing biblical stories or even quoting that many Bible verses, because a lot of people doesn’t really matter to them. We know there’s power in the word of God, but we of course have to prepare people to want to hear the word of God. So we want to share Jesus as our best friend, as the most important person in our lives, the person of Jesus, and talk about him and how we relate to him on a personal level. And so on our worksheet, we go through what are five categories of Jesus’s life that will help express how he can be a best friend and not just a theological idea to other people. So we talk about his personal life.
(42:39):
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He lived in a specific region of the world. He was born into a family where his father was a carpenter and he himself learned the trade. Jesus was a person. A lot of people can relate to that. I worked as a carpenter. Relationships. Who did Jesus have in his life? He had siblings, he had family, he had friends. He had his community, his Jewish community. I mean, there’s so much you can say about him, his influence, his credentials like Philip did. Philip gave the prophetic truth about Jesus and Isaiah and through the whole scriptures for telling who he is and the major events of his life. What did Jesus live through? What did he do historically verifiable so that we could know who he is on a personal level,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:31):
And then Jesus is coming again. And so you talk about that. Are you ready for when Jesus comes again?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (43:39):
Yes, exactly. And there’s of course a lot of really important details about Jesus’ life that proves or tells that he’s our Lord and Savior. We talk about his miraculous birth, we talk about his ministry, the miracles he performed and how he amazed so many thousands, tens of thousands of people during his life. We talk about his death, how significant his death was on a Roman cross and what it meant for us on a spiritual level, the forgiveness of our sins, the perfect sacrifice that the sacrificial system could never provide or fulfill. And then his resurrection and ascension and how all of these things together show that he is actually the one true God. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is one with the Father. And that no other religious system or worldview could provide the, it’s more than security, but that could provide just the comprehensiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to build your entire life on it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:46):
And then how do you bring people to a point of decision
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (44:51):
To
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:52):
Where they’re saying yes to Jesus?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (44:55):
Yeah. So we as a ministry, we have our resources that we talked about earlier, the Hope and Spark magazine. And in the back of those magazines we have this summary of what it means to receive Christ as your savior. It’s literally on the back page. It goes through these three main ideas that God loves you. Everyone has to know that God loves them to be drawn to God of course. And what he did for us, we talk about how all are sinners, which is also very much a part of the Romans road approach to summarizing the good news and what we’re being saved from. And then we talk about God’s plan to save us and what God did by sending his only Son Jesus to actually make a way for us to be with him. And so we know that people are going to present the gospel in a variety of ways and use particular scriptures that they’ve come to love and have significance in their lives. But we just really want to make sure that when people present the gospel, that they do talk about this desire, this longing that God has always had to be with us. What prevented him from being with us was our sin and what he did to take care of that problem so that we could be freed from death and give an eternal life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:17):
And so I like the word commitment. You ask people
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (46:20):
To
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:20):
Make a commitment to follow Christ. And then the fourth skill is to give God’s word. And this is something that your organization excels at.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
You’ve
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:31):
Been giving God’s word for decades, and so you love giving God’s word. But what are some of the resources that you have that can help people give God’s word? I know you have an app and some other ideas and ways that people can give more of God’s word to people.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (46:50):
Certainly. So as we already covered these hope and Spark magazines are kind of our two flagship resources that we give to virtually every church that we work with uses them. There are a few unique cases where we work in some closed countries that they can’t actively distribute the word of God the same way. So we work with audio Bibles and other things and partnership with other ministries, but we also have resources for things like prison ministry, working with people who are living in addiction or people who are unhoused so that we have a deeper look into the book of Romans justification. What does it mean for God to declare you innocent, even though you might be seen as guilty by the world? We also have a magazine called The Light and where we talk about Jesus being the light of the world. And we found that certain cultural backgrounds, particularly indigenous peoples, people from India, even certain groups, Chinese groups, that talking about this true light, this pure light, the goodness that is represented by it, it really resonates with them culturally speaking.
(48:01):
And so it allows us to share the gospel more effectively. But we also have our digital resources. We have currently nine short articles addressing very specific topics like depression, anxiety, loneliness, greed, things that people wrestle with on a personal level. And we show how the word of God speaks to that through these articles that you can easily download on your phone and send to someone in two seconds all the way across the world if you want. Beyond that, we have our New Life Bible app, and that is the complete Bible, and I think it has hundreds of languages right now. We also have on that some kind of topical Bible studies and even a find a church near you so that churches that we partner with that we’ve seen as trusted and true places to get discipled, we include all that in there so people can have a kind of one-stop shop application.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:00):
And so for the app, if they go to the iTunes library or on Android, how can they find it? What would they type in?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:11):
Yeah, just type in New Life Bible app. It should come up. It’s the icon of it is this kind of black square with a few other colors in it. I’ll pull it up on my phone right now just to, it’s been a long time since I’ve searched for it, but I’m assuming it’s still the top one that comes up.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:32):
Yeah, that’s always important to be able to find apps that people have. Alright, well those four skills. Connect with people, tell your story, share Christ’s story and give God’s word. Absolutely tremendous. And I think giving God’s word is really the answer to the question is how do you follow up on a new believer?
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:53):
Well,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:54):
The key is getting them into God’s word.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:57):
Yeah. And it’s been amazing, even these spark books that we have, we have such a desire from young people, from children and preteens that are so curious and interested about learning about God. They want to keep meeting with other kids and go through this book together. So we’re starting to see these little clubs forming like we want to call them Spark clubs or Spark groups, that we can gather children locally so that they can come to know Christ. And then many times their parents who drop them off also want to listen in. We’re seeing this happen all across Latin America and a lot of other nations, even in North America now and beyond who are requesting, can we do these spark gatherings as well? We have all these kids that want to learn, but where do we gather them? And so many, many things are happening. I mean, I could go on for ages about the miracles that we’re seeing and God opening up governments in previously closed countries, communist countries that are asking us to give our resources to every child in the country, millions of scripture resources that we are printing to distribute for those needs.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (51:06):
Well, tell us again how to find out more information about Share Word global and how people can get connected with you.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (51:17):
Yeah, so www.sharewordglobal.com. That will be the first and best place to go to explore it and see what we do there. Please, if you’re interested in anything that I said and bringing this to your church, because we offer our training for free, it’s a service that we love to give to the local church to mobilize and equip your people. I myself was a pastor and I wish I knew about Share word Global while I was pastoring because I would’ve loved that for our people. But yeah, you can send me an email, jordan@sharewordglobal.com, and I can answer any further questions you might have in any way that we can come and serve your church.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (51:58):
Well, Jordan, thank you so much for sharing the depth of expertise that you have on evangelism. It would bless any local church that wants to get their people fired up about sharing their faith. So Jordan, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (52:17):
Yeah, it was a huge pleasure. Thank you for the time, Daniel, and just for being an amazing, gracious host.
Evangelism Podcast Host (52:22):
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’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to 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.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (53:24):
Thanks 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. 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 (54:45):
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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Canada
Jessica King was born in Canada and she is a Canadian citizen. She is the president of King Ministries Canada. Every year we minister in multiple Canadian churches.
The address for King Ministries Canada is:
King Ministries Canada
PO Box 3401
Morinville, Alberta T8R 1S3 Canada
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Outreach to the First Nations people of La Loche, Canada
In the year before we took a team to La Loche, almost fifty people committed suicide over the course of one year (averaging almost one per week). In the video, you can see how we prayed against the spirit of suicide in La Loche. One year after our visit we received a miracle report that not one person had committed suicide that year! Jesus made a big difference in this community!
CAN YOU HELP US REACH PEOPLE FOR JESUS?
Evangelist Daniel King is on a mission to lead people to Jesus. But he cannot do it without your help. Can you give a financial gift today to help us “plunder hell to populate heaven?” To support King Ministries in our quest for souls, click here!