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Local Church

Samuel Jonsson | Building the Local Church in Sweden

Pastor Samuel Jonsson pastors a local church in the south of Sweden. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast we talk about what God is doing in Sweden, the spiritual atmosphere in Sweden, and how the Pentecostal church of Sweden is reaching out to their communities with the love of Christ.

Learn more about Pastor Samuel Jonsson: www.hovslattpingst.se

Summary: 

In this podcast episode, Evangelism Coach Daniel King interviews Pastor Samuel Jonsson from Sweden. Pastor Jonsson discusses the challenges of spreading the gospel in Sweden, a secular and individualistic country. However, he remains hopeful, noting that God is raising up young leaders and churches are starting to reach out and grow. Pastor Jonsson shares his church’s efforts to reach a specific area with a high concentration of broken homes and single parents. They have started a Sunday school and a children’s choir, which has attracted children from non-Christian homes. He also emphasizes the importance of pastors going on mission trips to expand their worldview and gain new perspectives. The episode concludes with a testimony of an 80-year-old man from Pastor Jonsson’s church who returned to a country he had previously worked in and witnessed the growth of the church.

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 Samuel Jonsson from the nation of Sweden. Thank you for joining me today.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (00:14):
Thank you so much for joining this podcast. It’s wonderful.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:17):
And so you are pastoring in the nation of Sweden. You have a Pentecostal church. Tell me what is God doing in Sweden right now?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (00:32):
I think God is doing a lot of things in Sweden. It’s quite, Sweden is quite a tough country in some ways, very individualistic, very secular in some ways. So it’s a quite hard time getting through everything else with the gospel, the message. But I think God is racing up young leaders and I think God is racing up leaders who wants to search the gifts of the Holy Spirit, get more into what God is doing, what God is saying, what God wants to do for the nation of Sweden. So I have hope for the nation of Sweden. I think God will do great things, but maybe we have to go through some tough things also during the way, but we can see some churches starting to reach out more, growing a little bit more. And then some churches of course struggling, especially in the north of Sweden, maybe small churches struggling a lot. And also in the south of Sweden, church is struggling because they’re quite small, some of them. But still I think God is moving in many ways. I can see small, I don’t know how to say it, but small signals of great things to come. I don’t know how to explain it better than that, but a longing for the things of God and a longing for the spirit of God to start to move and talk and speak and direct and heal and so on.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:05):
Now in what part of Sweden is your church located?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (02:09):
We are located in the south of Sweden, not the furthest down, I dunno how to say

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:15):
It,

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (02:16):
But in the south of Sweden. Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:18):
And I’ve heard that that area is maybe known as the Bible belt of Sweden. You have many believers in that area, but of

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (02:26):
Course there’s, compared to the rest of Sweden, there’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:28):
Still many people that need Jesus.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (02:31):
Yeah,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:31):
Definitely. In the context of your area, what are you doing to reach out to the lost and bring people to Jesus?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (02:42):
Yeah, if I go to my church, the church where I’m a pastor, we are trying to specifically actually reach out to a specific area where we live. Of course we tried to reach out to all people where we live, but God gave us a heart for a specific, is like a small, I don’t know how to say it in English, but apartment, house area, something like that. Many families live there who have a quite tough situation, single parents and broken homes and so on. And we just received the heart for that area to try to reach out. So the woman who is a child and family pastor in our church, she got the vision together with a couple of other guys to start to have a Sunday school in this area. So on a regular basis they go up there on Sundays first we meet together, all of us in church and we pray together, together with this team and together with the rest of the church, we’ll celebrate.

(03:49):
We have worship in church and then they go up and they have a Sunday school for kids. But the focus is also to reach out to the whole family. So primarily through the kids, but then through the kids to the parents as well. And in this area we also had small, you say small events, gone there, done fun things for the kids, just blessing them, talk to people, get to know people. So we are trying in different ways to reach out to this specific area because we realized that almost none of the churches where we have people coming from this area to their churches. So it’s almost like a small subculture almost in the outskirts of the area. So we are trying to get in there and trying to reach people with the gospel. But then we also actually, I want to tell you about a kid’s choir. That’s also,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:58):
I think this idea is a very unique outreach idea. You were telling me about your children’s pastor and she has started this choir for the children and what is that?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (05:10):
Yeah, she got the vision for that. Also, I think our kids pastor has some kind of an evangelistic heart and she just got a vision to start kids choir in the area. So first we just had kids from our church maybe in the beginning starting to come and they wanted to sing and learn to sing and so on. But then the kids started to take their friends from school into this choir. So a lot of friends came who came from non-Christian homes into this choir. So I think now they can gather on Tuesday evenings and on Tuesday evenings there can be 70 kids, sometimes 60 to 70 kids and maybe half of it are from non-Christian homes. So then we have added special services Sunday services on a regular basis during the semesters where we try to, we invite everyone, all of these families to come because the kids’ choir will sing and we try to give different kids and the choir specific roles.

(06:24):
So the families really will come because they want to see their kids and then they come and listen to their kids singing. And we just try to incorporate dramas into those services and incorporate a simple gospel message just to present the gospel in Jesus Christ to these families. And we have not yet seen the fruit we are praying for, but we are just trying to continue in that direction because just recently actually we had this kind of a service for, I think it was two weeks ago or three weeks ago. And then a grandma who had followed the family to the church, she told one of our leaders afterwards, I don’t think she was a Christian or had any Christian heritage in that way, but she said that these services means so much to me. It was like something touched her heart, but maybe she could not spell it out what it was. I believe it was the spirit of God of course, but maybe she could not spell it out. So we are trying to reach out also through this choir. And then the church where I’m a pastor is really, I told you in the car, I think it’s a really entrepreneurial church, many entrepreneurial people. So there are more ideas than we can almost do so many ideas, so many visions. But it’s really fun.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:57):
I think that’s really wonderful. I think in the years to come, some of those entrepreneurial ideas will result in grapefruit for the kingdom of

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (08:05):
God. Yeah, I hope. I

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:07):
Sure hope. Let’s talk about your history. How did you become a believer? How did you know that you were called to be a pastor?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (08:16):
Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home. So I grew up in a Pentecostal church and both of my parents were a part of the church. My father was an elder in the church, but when I was quite young, I think I was nine years old, I remember quite vividly that my sister came home. I don’t know where she had been or maybe she had been to a camp or something. But she came home one day and we sat and we ate dinner. And I remember my sister started to talking about God and saying things about God that touched me in a special way. I had never experienced that because I remember looking into my sister, I was only nine years old, but remember it still, I was looking at my sister and I realized she has something that I don’t have. I had some kind of faith in God.

(09:13):
I remember, I mean we prayed together as a family. We prayed in the evening and so on. We could read the Bible together. And I had a children’s kind of faith maybe, but I saw something in her eyes and I realized she has something. And later on I realized that she had in some way accepted Jesus entire life. And that made me think at an early age think like what is this? And I started to pray. I remember in my own room like Jesus, I also want what she has. But then the specific moment came when I was at a big conference and I remember I had decided in my heart that tonight I want to really spell out a prayer that Jesus, I want you here in my heart. So I said to my mother, we were sitting in the front row seat that the conference, and I remember still that I turned to my mother at the end of the service and I said to her, I want to become a Christian. And then she followed me to what you call it when the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:20):
Altar, the altar,

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (10:21):
Exactly to the altar. They had an altar called people were coming in front of the preacher or what? It

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:32):
Was for the altar time. Yeah,

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (10:35):
For the altar time, exactly. So I was just following my mother, and then an old man came up to us and he asked, what do you want? And I said, I want to become a Christian. And I remember praying that prayer, not feeling very much. I did not have a specific feeling in my body or anything, but from that moment, I have never looked back. It’s like Jesus has been the biggest part of my life since that moment. And then I got baptized a couple of years later when I was 11 or 12 or something, 11 years old. I think I had to wait a little bit. And then I got baptized. And then when I was in seventh grade, I experienced the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues for the first time at the church service, like a prayer service or something like that in my home church. I was sitting alone and just feeling the spirit, starting to draw me to him and then giving me words, speaking of tongue.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:35):
And then how did you know that you were called to be a pastor? To be in the ministry?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (11:41):
It’s a quite long process actually. But when I was in seventh, eight, nine grade somewhere, I started to think a lot about what am I going to do with my life? And remember quite early that sometimes when I thought about that, I started to think maybe I should be a preacher or maybe I should do missionary work or maybe I should. I started to have those thoughts in my mind, but I was pushing it away because I thought that pastor is always not for me. It’s like old men in strange clothing and I don’t want to be that. So I pushed it away. But then when I came to, I think in the states, you call it senior high school. In Sweden we call it gymnasium. So when I came to gymnasium when I was like 16, 17, 18 years old, then I started to become really passionate about serving God.

(12:45):
So we started a group in school, me and some friends, we had a group in the school, we were going to a Christian group and we did outreach and gave away books and gave away Bibles and did different events. And the passion to serve God just grew in me during that season. I could not say that I have a calling to become a pastor, but I just knew I want to serve Jesus. Jesus is the best thing I want to serve him. So that grew in my heart really during that period. And then when I came out of high school, I was still quite confused, what am I going to do with my life? But then I had some different events happening that pointed me in this direction. First it was actually, I worked at an industry where my father worked just for a short period of time.

(13:37):
And one day when I was standing there and working, I actually heard a voice. I think this was almost the first time where I can say I heard almost a clear voice. I almost jumped because I heard a voice saying that when you come home from work, your pastor are going to call you and he will offer you a yoga church to be a youth youth leader. And I was like, what is this? I remember going to the toilet and being like, God, was that you? It was so whoop. But then when I came home, I went up to the tv, put on the tv, and then 30 minutes later the phone rang and I just immediately knew my pastor is calling now, my mom picked up the phone and she called me Samuel Michael, our pastor is calling you. And I was like, yep.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
It’s like God calling Samuel in the Bible, Samuel.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (14:34):
Yeah, it was so specific, I just knew it. Okay, yes, I will take this. I took the phone, hello, Hey, we have been thinking do you want to work as a youth leader here in the church? And I was like, yeah, I’m going to think about it. You had a word from God, you knew he was calling. Let me pray about it a little bit. Yes, let me just pray. But I knew the answer of course. So then I worked at my home church for a short period of time. And then one year later or half year later, I went to Peru actually with a friend. We were on a short mission trip together, me and my friend. And in Peru, I once again heard that clear voice. And that was also very specific. I remember one night when I was laying in my bed, I just suddenly heard a voice say, when you come home, you are going to go to Bible college.

(15:29):
And he also told me what bible college it was. You will know when you get home why you are going to that specific Bible college. And in that bible college you will get what you call it. You will get direction for where and how you will serve me. So then I came to the Bible college. I met my then soon to be wife early on in the Bible college. And we started to date and see that we experienced, we felt that we should be together. And then at that bible college, in the beginning of it, I once again a third time heard the voice talk. And I remember the voice said that in the spring you will get an offer to start to work at the church and I want you to say yes, and then you will continue in that direction. So when the spring came, once again, that situation occurred.

(16:29):
So we got an offer, me and my then soon to be wife. We had an offer from a church in the north part of Sweden, far up north to come and work together with them quite broadly. We worked as some kind of youth workers, youth and kids workers, maybe you could call it, but also very evangelistic and also quite pioneering, but also preaching, teaching and everything. We had to do everything. So it was a great school actually to be there. So we was there for three years and then I felt, okay, this is what God has laid on my heart to work, to be in church, to be in ministry, continue as a pastor in different capacities. So then I went to study theology. So then we went to Stockholm in Sweden, the capital, I studied theology and leadership, and my wife studied to be an OB optician.

(17:25):
I think you can say. She had had that on her heart for a very long time to become that. So we was in Stockholm studying. And then I actually once again heard that voice. I’ve been hearing, of course God speaks all the time, but sometimes you can hear it more specifically, I believe. So I heard the voice when I was studying, say that the church where you are practicing now, they will ask you to become their senior pastor. And also once again, I want you to say yes. And I was like, I can’t be a senior pastor. Of course I can be on staff, I can be in a team, but can I lead the church? I had, it felt too big almost for me. I was only like 27 years old at that time or something. So I was like, oh no, that’s too big.

(18:16):
But then it came later on, a year later from that time because their pastor sadly became quite sick. The one I worked together with him in a small, I had a small percentage. I was paid a small percentage. So I worked at the church together with him, and then it became sick. And then they asked me, and then we just felt, yeah, God has prepared this, so let’s stay. So when I had studied, I continued in that church outside of Stockholm, a suburb of Stockholm. That’s like a long trajectory, but small steps where God has led. It

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:53):
Is beautiful to see how God has spoken to you at several key moments in your life and given you direction. Now, right now you and I are together in Asia, and I don’t want to mention exactly the particular country that we’re in, but we are here telling people about Jesus. Now I have a question for you. Do you think that pastors should regularly go on mission trips to different parts of the world? And what benefit would that be to a pastor?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (19:31):
First, I just want to say definitely I think you should go if you have the possibility. And the church may have the economy to send you away sometimes once in a while, I think you should do it definitely. Because especially when you come from the West, and maybe if you come from Europe who is quite once again quite individualistic, quite secular, it’s a quite tough place sometimes to be spiritually, I think. But then to also come to other places and see other kinds of soils almost,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:08):
They have a different set of problems. Yeah,

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (20:10):
Yeah. Every part of the world have their problems, but sometimes it can be good to change the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:16):
Problems

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (20:17):
To see something else and see how other kinds of churches are thinking to see how they are working, to see how they are reaching out to the neighborhood. And when you come to places like this, we are now in Asia or I have traveled to Africa several times and you see, you can see, especially maybe when I was in Africa, you can see their hunger for God and their hunger to pray, their hunger to seek things of the kingdom, their hunger to lay hands on the Sikh and pray for them and believe that something actually can happen that stirs something in your heart that you have to take home. I mean, you can’t leave it there. You have to take it home

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:04):
At the very least. It gives you some good stories to tell next time.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (21:08):
Yeah, exactly. Definitely good stories to tell in your service. But I think, yeah, I always recommend, I had actually, when I was in Stockholm, I was the pastor of a satellite church and I had senior pastor working, leading me of course, and leading all the satellite church pastors. And he once said that you have to travel as a pastor from your country to other countries because you have to expand your world, otherwise you will become very narrow-minded and just thinking that you have all the answers and you know everything. So you have to, on a regular basis, expand your world. And I have carried that thought with me. If I have the chance to go away for a week or some days and you see something else and experience another culture, another church. And then I take it. And then I also love to travel, so it’s nice to travel, but I like that idea to expand the mind and expand the world and not become too narrow.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:20):
Now, there is a really wonderful testimony that has happened this week in this part of Asia. The Swedish Pentecostal church has actually been working for many years, and you brought with you one older gentleman from your church. He’s 80 years old, and he actually was here in this country working back in 1985.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (22:46):
Yeah, somewhere

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:47):
Early eighties,

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (22:48):
84, 85 until I think 87 or something like that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:52):
Yeah. And so at that time, the church in this nation was very small, and now it is growing. They have gone from only a handful of locations to now over 450 different congregations with over 50,000 believers just in this one network of churches. And it was so beautiful to see this 80 year old, great man of God, come back and see some of the fruit of what the seeds that were planted so many years ago.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (23:32):
It was so beautiful. And he both were a part of the leadership seminar we had. And I mean, his English is not so well right now, but still sitting there and listening to him teach. And you think about how he planted that seed for like 35 years ago or something like that, more than 35 years ago, and he now gets to sit in front of young leaders in the north part of this country and teach them the word of God. I think it was so, it touched my heart, but then also to see him lead in the prayer of salvation yesterday at the campaign, it also touched me so much because you can see the faithfulness of God and you can see how he has walked with Jesus all his life, and he still has a passion for the kingdom of God. I mean, he’s seen a lot. He both have seen the good things and the ugly things in church and in the Christian life, and he’s seen everything of that. But still, he has a passion, a soft heart. A soft heart for God, and a soft heart for

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:43):
People. Now tell me his name. How do you pronounce it?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (24:49):
Sorry, not the common name in the States.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:52):
Yeah. Well, it was so beautiful to see, and it really encourages me because it means that the seeds that we plant today, imagine what God will do 30, 40 years from now. Can you imagine being 80 years old and coming back to some of the places where you have sowing seed

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (25:11):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:11):
Seeing a great harvest?

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (25:12):
Yeah. That’s a dream. That would be a dream.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:16):
Amen.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (25:17):
Could be in that place.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:18):
Amen. Well, brother Samuel, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I appreciate it.

Pastor Samuel Jonsson (25:23):
Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Good to meet you.

 

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Moses Muguro | Empowering the Local Church for Evangelism

Moses Muguro pastors in Nairobi, Kenya. He completed his Doctorate of Ministry at Multnoma University. The focus of his research was evangelism in the local church. He is implementing his research in his church with innovative ideas like using sports for evangelism. You will be inspired as you listen to the story of what he is doing to reach people for Jesus in Kenya.

Connect with Pastor Moses Muguro on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moses.muguro

 

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 am in Nairobi, Kenya with my good friend, pastor Moses Muguro . Thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Moses Muguro (00:15):
Thank you very much Dr. Daniel King for this coming to Kenya and this moment to be with you. This is a miracle

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:23):
<Laugh>. Now, yesterday we had a wonderful time. I flew in 7:30 AM I landed. Yes. And you came to the airport. You picked me up, took me straight over to your church. And I had the wonderful privilege and opportunity of, of ministering. And you have such a beautiful church. It’s you, you’re so

Moses Muguro (00:42):
Blessed. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Yeah. The Lord has blessed us in amazing ways. But one of the things with our church is we are a church that has a focus to reach out, not to stay within the four corners of the church. We have an obligation and we usually, I usually tell the church and we tell each other, we are not just building a church. It’s Jesus who said, I will build my church. Our work is to go out and bring sinners to Christ. So we are there to be equipped in the church. It is an equipping station at the congregation. This is just an equipping station. You get equipped, but you don’t stay inside. The work is out there. We minister to the people inside when they get saved, and then we release them into their destinations, into their fields. That is what we feel as a church. God has called us for

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:37):
Now. What is the name of your church?

Moses Muguro (01:39):
It is called Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa. All Nations Gospel by Church Perfa per stands, Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:49):
Wow. It was such a, a privilege to be there yesterday. Now, you and I have been friends for a while now. Yes. We first met at Multnomah University Yes. In Portland, Oregon. Yes. You were there studying with Dr. Tim Rob net. Yes. And he has one of the only evangelism programs at the doctoral level in the entire United States. And so you are going through the, the doctorate of Ministry program there at Multnomah University, and the focus of your research was evangelism. And so I, I had the opportunity to take one class, and so we met, we became friends. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you also have a brother George. He a twin

Moses Muguro (02:31):
Brother

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:32):
George, who is your twin. And so both of you love Jesus and are serving the Lord. Indeed. Indeed. Now, now tell me a little bit about the research that you did for your doctorate to ministry.

Moses Muguro (02:44):
Yeah. it was a miracle meeting with you at the Morton University, and just God connected us. And my, the, my research, the focus of my paper is raising evangelist in the local churches. And I specifically gave that to my church because I began raising local evangelist in local churches. The evangelist, especially in Africa, is not the, the, the evangelist is not recognized. He’s not identified. Is that is a By the way, we are planning evangelism meeting next week. So where is the evangelist? But in my, in my focus, I began raising local evangelist. And every fortnight, every two weeks, I began a class for evangelist. Every Sunday afternoon, bring the evangelist from my church and other churches and just begin to train them to work with them, to equip them. We get to hear their testimonies, what God is doing.

(03:46):
And in my, in my church, I have evangelist and some of them are in the pay, pay payroll because the, the, the evangelist is a very vital part of the body of Christ. Christ gave us the apostles, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher. So the evangelist is part of the part of the minister to equip the body and also to go out. And so that’s what we do. Every fortnight, the evangelists come, and I also invite other evangelists outside to come and share with them to equip them. And it is amazing what God is doing when we begin to align ourselves and hear the voice of the Holy Spirit on the place of evangelist and then time harvest.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:37):
And so how have you implemented this research in your church? What results have you seen?

Moses Muguro (04:46):
Thank you very much. I have seen for the last actually more than three years, I have seen the evangelist gaining, number one, gaining confidence and recognize and being recognized in the body of Christ. As ministers, they’re being recognized and they’re being identified, and they’re being helped even financially. I mean, people standing with them and saying, yes, this is very important. This is very key. And even the church recognizing we have to embrace the evangelist, the office of the evangelist, and also the local evangelist. We have to work with them. We have to allow them to minister both within and outside. So I’ve seen churches, not just even my church, I’ve seen churches realizing this is important. Pastor Moses is doing this. I’m a pastor and an evangelist. I’m an evangelist and a pastor. I don’t know which comes first. I, I, I realize I, I operate in both offices. And by the grace of God, I have been able to identify, equip, and even empower and begin to release to release evangelist into the harvest field.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:06):
I think this is so important because often in the church, the pastor is recognized mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, if you feel called to be in ministry. Yes. Then people say, oh, you must be called to be a pastor. Yes. But the, the gift of the evangelist is a little bit different than the gift of the, the pastor. And sometimes what you find is that evangelists who are called to be evangelists, they get pushed into being pastors. And, and then if they, they try to do evangelism, there doesn’t seem to be a place for them. And so I think it’s so important to elevate and lift up the, the understanding of the office of the evangelists. We need evangelists in the church.

Moses Muguro (06:47):
And, and, and what you’re saying is very true, especially for Africa. It is been bad. We, we had stretched to the extreme where the evangelist was like evangelism work, and the evangelist was left for the young people, the guys who have nothing to do. If you’re called to the ministry, go to the Bible school. You are sent to the church to be a pastor. And many of them struggled because when you are an evangelist and you’re fixed into an office that is not yours or into a ministry that is not yours, you’ll always struggle. You’ll always have scam something like, no, there is something. I’m missing the calling of God. The mantra of God in my life is I am an evangelist. And when I began to equip evangelists, like some of them, I’ll buy them even portable public address system and give them, they’ll be so excited the following day I’ll see them reaching out, and I’m like, you are an evangelist.

(07:47):
You have been fixed to be a Bible teacher. But look, you are now your voice. Look at your passion. Look at the heartbeat, everything about you. You actually realize this is who God called me into. This is from the creation of the world. God wanted me to be a proclaimer of the good news of Jesus Christ, and to proclaim it as an evangelist. So I have, it is one evangelist, is one of the people who are actually, we are waiting for the ministry of evangelism to be fulfilled. Then Jesus comes the gospel to be proclaimed everywhere. And Jesus comes. So he’s one of the key persons who is very vital in this time season.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:35):
Take a moment to talk to other African pastors if they want to lift up evangelism in their church. First of all, how do they identify people in the church who maybe have the gift of an evangelist? And then second, how do they start to give opportunities to evangelists, to, to preach the gospel. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then how do they train them so that they can be equipped to really do the ministry that God has called them to do? How can we here in Africa start to lift up more evangelists?

Moses Muguro (09:08):
Yeah. Thank you very much. The first and the most important thing is when, when, when, when a believer has come to Christ and has been discipled given raised and given the word of God and now reached, and then this person begins, usually you find people who begin to volunteer. They’re giving themselves, they’re saying, I need to serve. I need to do somewhere. And then you realize this is, this is a, it’s like a baby, and I can see a talent. They’re, they’re, they’re pulling well on this side, they’re doing well on this side. And then you begin to, to tap that talent. And all of the things I do is identify them in the church. And then I create a forum. You, you, you, you, you have a passion. You, you want to, and I begin teaching the whole church the importance of evangelism.

(10:00):
And there are people who will volunteer, call them out. Please come. If this is your heartbeat, if, if you feel that God has laid a burden for sins, come, we want to walk with you. So I identify them, and then I begin to see little talent. This person is flowing in the outdoors. This person has a talent in this area. I begin to sharpen them to walk with them. You, you are in the marketplace, evangelist. I want you to go there. You are a full-time evangelist. I want you to be quit. I have sent some to Bible school not to be quit as pastors, to be quit and nourished and given the right staff. Then when they come out, I begin now to give them to, we create the class. When we created the class, the people we had sent to Bible school, they also need to come to the evangelism class.

(10:50):
Then I give them public address systems, drugs, materials. And then I give them opportunity. I give these people opportunity even to teach, to teach in the church the importance of evangelism. Another teachings, some of my evangelists have given them topics. Topics. This is an evangelist who was growing up, teachers about Stephen was an evangelist. Bring to us a character of Stephen. And then I give the evangelist to do that homework, and they give, bring it out that well, but I’m building also these evangelists to pick these characters and to build up with them. And then I give them also Sunday service to minister to the church, because the ministry of evangelism and the minister of the evangelist has a lot of blessings. It carries with it healing and encouragement, comfort, both within the church and outside the church. And I see God using them in different aspects.

(11:46):
They’re releasing different encouragement to the body. And then they go out. They have a lot of boldness. The pastor has commissioned us because if they’re not commissioned, they’ll not be, they’ll be operating within any umbrella. I mean, outside an umbrella, they can be attacked. So I commission them go to this direction but come back and report and tell me what happened. Go to the school, come back and report what happened. So the pastors in Africa, we must first of all identify. They’re already there. They’re already there. The giftings of the evangelism evangelist is already in the church. Identify, then you recruit, beginning listing. In my church, I had to enlist. I had to write down, write down your name in that particular class. Then from there, train them, equip them, send them to Bible school, have classes within the church. Then opportunity, open opportunities for them. Because if you don’t also open opportunities for them, they might not have the strength to knock doors, but when they go with a, like, they need a letterhead, an introduction letter to go to this school, that gives them a, a very big platform. They’re recognized. You’re coming from this direction. So it is very important we begin working those steps by steps and begin to create an awareness in the church that evangelists are part of the ministry of the church.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:17):
Now, you have actually implemented these ideas in your church, and one of your innovative ideas is to do evangelism by sports. Yes. And so you are starting a basketball tournament inviting many different basketball teams from your neighborhood to come to the church. And then you plan to sponsor them playing against one another, then feed them and, and give them something. And, and then evangelize, tell these basketball players about Jews. So yesterday we went and we anointed the basketball court as a tool for evangelism. Yes. And then you also plan to do the same thing with football. Tell, tell me some about those plans and what you hope to see God do.

Moses Muguro (14:04):
Yeah. you know, evangelist King, one of the things that God is doing with the, this generation of evangelist is we just have to ask God for ideas. Yeah. because God is not limited with ideas. Even in Africa, we don’t have those big resources, but God can give us fresh ideas because God is a God of freshness every morning, fresh manner. Yeah. And so we’ve been doing different approaches, which I can share of evangelism going out street evangelism pray, walking in our estate evangelism. And recently we said, why don’t we now begin to be to create a very good awareness, friendship to these young people in the community. And we we, we just begin to brainstorm and say, Hey, what are the approaches? And one of the approaches, sport evangelisms evangelism through sports, and we said with the young people, we are starting with the basketball.

(15:08):
And guess what? We changed our parking lot into a basketball co a pitch. So Saturday, I called the painter, paint this place and make it a basketball pitch. And I had told the, the, the young people on Sunday, we’ll be anointing the ground and releasing the game. And the, by the grace of God evangelist King is here on Sunday. So we anointed that basketball pitch, which is our parking lot. And I’m sure some of the members of the church are like, oh, pastor’s bringing sports into the church. But you see, the thing is, when I went there yesterday after the church by five, I was in the, in the, in the church. And the boys were playing, and they were about a hundred and something boys and girls who had come to watch the game. And my, my, my evangelism, young people were evangelists, were the, my evangelism team were witnessing to these boys.

(16:11):
And we had put Christian music. And these are boys I’ve never seen in church. These are boys who are not Christians. And remember, we have anointed the field and we have said, whoever steps in here, the power of God must touch them. I was excited because the only way for us to reach this generation, like the young people, is to befriend them, is to go to them and tell them, I’m a friend. I am a parent. I have a, I have a, I have a young boy you prayed for who graduated my son wisdom. And for me to become a friend to wisdom, I mean, to reach him, I have become, to become a friend. And I know with sports, every boy loves sports. So I could see all these boys, and they are happy. They’re like, dads have not come here to bo bundles with the, with a gospel message.

(17:03):
But they are creating a forum for us to have fun. As they’re having fun. I’m also taking care of their health. They’re not at home just watching cheap televisions that we get from China, wasting their time. They’re exercising. Number two. Number three, I’m keeping them engaged in the right environment. They’re not going out there where they can do all kinds of things. Drugs. They’re within the safe environment. Every parent would want to release their boys and girls. I could see the girls there. I could see children there. Parents were very comfortable. Number four, it is an opportunity for these boys because many of them are not working. We have a lot of joblessness. Yeah. So now we are beginning to see, we can form a sports club that can go very far. That was begun by a church. That is a vision for the young people. And the vision for the, for president and the leadership in Africa is to engage in our young people in productivity. So they become product. And now the main thing, number five, we are winning them to Christ. Wow. So this is the focus for the men. We have begun, we have begun soccer evangelism through through sports soccer.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:21):
Now here in Kenya, do you call it soccer or football?

Moses Muguro (18:23):
We call it football.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:24):
Okay. So, so football, half, most of the world calls it football. In America, we say soccer. But let’s think about the math. Yesterday in, in, in church, you said that you had 20 teams that signed up for the tournament. And each team has 20 players. Yes. And so, 20 times 20, 400, 400, you are going to have the opportunity to impact the lives of 400 young people. And plus, when all the boys come to play soccer, all the girls will come to watch them. Yes. The parents will come to watch them. And you will have the opportunity to have a major impact in your area.

Moses Muguro (19:04):
I have never worked this way before, but I believe it’s the vision of the Holy Spirit. ’cause We’ve been praying, we have a prayer center. We’ve put the map of Africa, the map of the world, and we’ve been saying, Lord, give us a nation ask of the Lord. And he give you the nation for an inheritance. Yeah. And even for a community. And the men, as we were talking, they said, why don’t you do soccer, football? And as, as, as I told you, they have invited 20 teams and they have invited the member of Parliament for our community. They have invited the, the member of County Assembly. They have invited different groups. They have hired public address system. We have hired the biggest field in our community, the biggest field that is owned by the Kenya Airport Authority. They have allowed us, because it is a big tournament, tournaments are coming.

(19:55):
They’re hearing that this is happening. We are sponsoring as a church. It is not cheap. But the gospel is not cheap. The gospel is not cheap. And I think many times when we make it cheap, that is when we get cheap results. So we are saying, as a church, we will do everything possible. Let these things come, let them pray, let them play. Let them go the professional way. We’ll have professional coaches, professional referees, and everybody, but we are winning these people to Christ before the games. We pray after the games, we pray for them. We share the gospel with them. They have accepted that. And because we are we, we, we, they have accepted us. We are not condemning them. We are telling them, come, come on, come with your friends. This is a nice time. Because we have a lot of, you see these men and these young boys and girls, many of them are not working.

(20:51):
This will be holidays, especially for the soccer. So they’ll all be there. And we have three days. We are doing it for three days, three consecutive days. We have a winner, a cup that will be donated. We are asking the member of parliament to come and present it. And we want him also to hear the gospel plus his enter, plus his team and the whole community. And this is what we, this is what I’ve come to realize eventually is also have to keep asking God for step past. What is the next level, Lord, if you are in this community, how will you reach them? And Christ will use all these avenues. He’ll use the boat to sit down. Yeah. He’ll use the net. He’ll use all those things. And we now have to begin using the boats, the nets, the donkeys of our days, all those opportunities that are there to bring people the recreation.

(21:50):
Christ would go to the seaside and minister to people, because that’s a good place. That’s a good spot for people. There was grass where Christ was teaching, and he was organizing all these people. Disciples let them sit in 50. And when we begin to see the aspect of Lord, give us direction, give us freshness. Give us all these platforms that are in this planet for us to communicate the gospel, then these sins, they’re ready to receive the gospel. They’re ready to hear. Actually, I think we’ve, I’ve come to realize the biggest problem has been the church. Because the church, we closed ourselves to the four corners. And we thought our, our main business is a four corners. We have the best choir in the church. We stay there. Seniors will not come there. There’ll be one or two or three. And that’s why in our sports evangelism, like yesterday, all these bad boys were outside comfortable.

(22:52):
They’re comfortable. They’re like, oh, we don’t see here guys. The pastor with the collar and everybody chasing us and telling us, can you be seated here? Well, and can you be quiet? They were all cheering. They were all loud. Wow. I was telling them, cheer your team this is a beach and be happy, have fun. But at the end of it, I know I am breaking an ice. Where they have seen the church is like, I’m not welcome. We are telling them we are actually not inside the church. We are outside where God is. And I believe this is the direction the, the, the Lord is showing us as a church. We just have to keep out going out. We are an equipping sta station as a church to be equipped. And then we can’t stay with all this energy. If we stay with all this energy. Oh, they’re like the fallers. If we stay here, we die. We’d rather go out. We’d rather at midnight wake up, go meet this army. And we realize God is at work. The angels are at work. The Holy Spirit is at, and he’s waiting for just the fallers. So in Africa, we are like those people, but we are realizing the light has come. The light has come. Well, I

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:07):
Love your heart for evangelism, your heart, for raising up evangelism in the local church. And I believe God will give you a great harvest of souls.

Moses Muguro (24:18):
Amen. Through

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:19):
This evangelism by sports. Amen. It is a big investment for your church. Yes. But I believe that it will produce great results in the years to come. And, and God will give you many people that will, will come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. These young people. God’s gonna raise them up to be Yes. Leaders here in Africa. Amen. And pastors and evangelists and, and great business leaders and politicians and Amen. And so God’s gonna do many things through this outreach.

Moses Muguro (24:49):
You know, one young man who came there, had, had, had gone back was once a Christian and went back and he came and he was drunk. He was a young man. I knew him. Yeah. And his name is David. And he told me, you know, pastor, I’m back. I’m back to me, for him to tell me I’m back, it was like the prodigal son coming back home. And you see, I could try many ways to reach him, but he saw his friends outside the church court playing and his arm back. Wow. So we have to, you know, all these people they’re waiting to be received. Mm-Hmm. The, the, the, the, we have just to open our hands, our hearts and our resources, and receive all these sons and daughters because they’re the God loves them. God caress for them.

(25:46):
God is thinking while we are inside the church, God is saying, but I have other ship who are out there, and I leave the 99, I go and I go for those ones. So you have to partner with God when he’s leaving the 99 to go for the one ship. And that’s what, as a church, we are saying, there’s this one ship. And when Christ is leaving the 99, I don’t want to be in the 99. I want to be with Christ when he’s going for this one to bring this one to the 99. So that’s what God has put into my heart as an evangelist. And even raising other evangelist. We now have to be uncomfortable. We have to be uncomfortable where we’ve been so comfortable. Things are like everything is okay in the church. No. I believe even the reason why there is a stirring up in many churches is because we don’t go out. If we go out, then we’ll bring freshness. But if we don’t go out, there’s no freshness in the church. So that’s what I told my church. If you don’t go out, we’ll be fighting the choir. Do not sing good songs today. But let’s, let’s take the choir outside and you realize those songs are good <laugh>.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:55):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the Evangelism podcast.

Moses Muguro (27:00):
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. King. I appreciate you coming to Africa. This is very prophetic. And you, you released a prophetic word in my church. We are going far. Amen. We are experiencing a new level in Jesus

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:15):
Name. Well, we are a pair of docs. Amen. Dr. Moses. Yes. Dr. Daniel together. Yes. Winning the world for

Moses Muguro (27:22):
Jesus. Winning the world for Jesus. Amen. And thank you for your testimonies. How when you grew up, you are Jesus. That was

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:30):
<Laugh>

Moses Muguro (27:31):
What?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:31):
Thank Yeah. In the drama. I always play the part of Jesus in the drama to lead people to Jesus.

Moses Muguro (27:36):
Amen. Amen. You’re an encouragement to the evangelist in Africa. Thank

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:42):
You. And

Moses Muguro (27:42):
Keep coming to Africa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:43):
Oh, I love Africa. Amen. It is wonderful to be here in Kenya.

Moses Muguro (27:47):
Amen. Amen. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:49):
Amen. I’ll come back.

Moses Muguro (27:50):
Welcome. And you are welcome, Kenya. Make it one of your headquarters and we’ll be very happy because we have to reach Somalia. We have to reach a Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan right now. Yeah. It is in chaos. Central Africa Republic. We have to Libya. Libya is in Kios, and we have to go out Egypt Malawi, Mozambique, those African countries. I, I’ve been to a few and I shed tears because they need a gospel. Amen. They need a gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:24):
Amen. Well, I believe that God will raise up young people in your church that you’ll even begin to send out as evangelists and missionaries. Oh, yes. Across this entire part of Africa.

Moses Muguro (28:34):
Oh, yes. Oh yes. That, that’s, that’s our heartbeat. We have the map of Africa in our prayer room and actually the whole map of the world and also the map of Africa and rich people groups. And we have all these nations and we keep praying for them. But now I’m saying the harvest is playing for the laborers are few. Lord, send the labors. And we are the labors. Yeah. So we also have to begin hearing the Lord saying, now go. Now go. I mean, God answers, but he also comes and says, you, you are the solution. You have the answer. So I’ve been telling them, Somalia, we have to go. If you don’t go, then they will. There will be instability in Somali. They’ll come to us. When they come to us. They’ll disturb us. When they disturb us. We have no option but to go pray for them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, go speak to them. And we have seen a little bit of that in Kenya. And I tell my Kenyan, my Kenyan ministers, we should be careful because, because we are not going to them. God will bring them to us. Amen. And he’s doing

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:33):
It. Amen. Amen.

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Alpha Hayward | A Ministry Day in the Park

Alpha Hayward loves reaching people for Jesus in a park right in the middle of a neighborhood. His ministry has developed an innovative plan for organizing an outreach day at your local park. On today’s Evangelism Podcast we will talk about park ministry and about how to activate your local church in evangelism.

Website: https://www.thedayinthepark.com/

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Alpha Hayward loves reaching people for Jesus in a park, right in the middle of a neighborhood. His ministry has developed an innovative plan for organizing an outreach day at your local park. On today’s evangelism podcast. We will talk about park ministry and about how to activate your local church. In evangelism.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:33):
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 (00:57):
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 Alpha Hayward. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Alpha Hayward (01:08):
Hey, thank you, Daniel. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
Now you are doing days in the park in, so you have put together a manual that helps people that want to do an evangelistic activity in a park. Tell me how did you get started doing that?

Alpha Hayward (01:29):
Yeah, so years ago, I’d say back in 2006, when I was still a youth pastor the Lord gave me a vision at a park with doing music and providing food and games for children and also doing a three on three basketball tournament. And so that’s where it got birthed. And just ever since then each year we just kept doing it. We just kept doing an annual park event based off of the scripture out of Luke chapter 14 where Jesus talks about the parable of the great banquet.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:05):
Give me just a second here.

Speaker 5 (02:09):
Yeah. All right. Looking good, looking good.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:17):
So you had a vision of the, this great banquet. Yeah. And you decided to start reaching out in the park. Tell me what does one of these park outreaches look like?

Alpha Hayward (02:28):
So it basically looks like a, a party at the park, like a, like a festival or even, even you, you could say, like, it looks like a really huge birthday party, you know? It’s a barbecue it’s music. The difference is, is that it’s like live music, different artists coming out. There’s people who are speakers that come out there’s professional athletes that come out. And when we started this, it was pretty basic, you know, it was, was just using resources from the relationships we had of people who were willing to come for free so that we could do it on a budget of 500 bucks. And so that’s, that’s how we started. So share with me some of the testimonies of what God has done through these outreaches. So it started with me talking with my church. So I was a youth pastor and the only real evangelism type ministry that was happening in our church was happening through our ministry because my wife and I have been evangelistic ever since we were involved in ministry.

Alpha Hayward (03:37):
So, and so what we thought was we would talk to a couple folks that we knew around the neighborhood that had like, like one guy had a skateboard shop. And so we asked him, Hey sorry, we haven’t met before, but I see you have a skateboard shop. It was called skate Legion with Greg Maxwell, me and I said, Hey, Greg would you like to help us reach some teenagers by coming over and setting up some ramps and you can promote your business if you want to, but there’s, you know, there’s teenagers that like skateboarding. So would you like to come join us and help us with this once in a while? Maybe like whenever you’re available. And, and he said, you know, that sounds like a good idea. I think I would want to do that.

Alpha Hayward (04:25):
And so that’s kind of what got the ball rolling. That’s what kind of got things started. And then I came outside one day and I just, boom, just had this vision and, and I called a friend. I said, Hey, I think God just gave me this vision of doing like a concert outreach event at this park with food and stuff. And so I just started sharing it with people that I know. So with Greg Maxwell me with some pastors at my church with some friends that I knew, and then that’s how I started making connections because I met Tim burn through Greg Maxwell mirror through one of my friends. I heard about the Louis plow association. And so I just started wherever there was an opportunity to meet someone. I just took it. And I just started talking with people and just started sharing with people with no no agenda of like, I gotta get money, I gotta get money.

Alpha Hayward (05:19):
My focus wasn’t on getting money. My focus was on Lord, put me in touch with people that would like to do something like this. And through the years of building relationship, the, the ministry of day in the park grew because of the relationships, not because of the money, the money came as the ministry grew so completely different mindset or, or even model of doing outreach. And what’s different is this is like neighborhood outreach. So the focus isn’t a huge citywide event. It’s focused on a specific neighborhood. So instead of maybe thinking 2050 or a hundred thousand people, you’re thinking maybe a thousand people, 500 people, maybe, maybe even 5,000 people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:10):
So now if someone drives past a park, they see your event going on, mm-hmm <affirmative> what are they going to see? What’s going to attract them to stop and say, Hey, I wanna see what’s happening. Right?

Alpha Hayward (06:23):
So of course we do our mailers. We do some door to door. We do some talking to some business owners and stuff. And what we do is we put up the flyers the posters, and it says the day in the park, it doesn’t advertise any specific person. There’s not even an image of a person’s face on it or anything. It just says the day in the park, and then underneath it, it says something like community event or family friendly event, something like that. So that the neighborhood knows, Hey, this is something that perhaps me and my kids can check out. And so they’ll also see things on their like games and prizes and or cotton candy, snow cones, or they’ll, they’ll see stuff like that, all, all over the banner and poster.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:13):
And so not only are you doing day in the park, but you’re also pastoring a church, right. And you are by vocational because you also have a business that you run. Right. So how do you juggle all these different balls?

Alpha Hayward (07:29):
It’s it’s difficult at times, but one thing that helps me for sure is that my, my wife is side by side with me through all this. Another thing is my business is at the stage where I have a good manager. That’s able to run the business when I’m not there. And at the church, there are several elders and leaders that do a great job at taking their role and serving and doing what they’re supposed to do. So it gives me the freedom to be able to move around a little more and, and to be able to kind of put on the different hats at the different seasons. So when it’s time to get ready for day in the park, I can put on that hat when it’s time to be pastor alpha, I can put on that hat. And when it’s time to run, Alpha’s auto detail, I can also put on that hat.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:17):
Do you think that there’s different skills that are needed for each of these different areas?

Alpha Hayward (08:23):
Well, certainly there are some skills, right? Because auto detailing, you you’ve gotta know how to run a buffer in shampoo carpets correctly. But for the most part, what it takes is having absolute faith in the Lord, having a good work ethic and having vision and being willing to be the kind of person who can train up some other leaders and then release them to do things so that you don’t feel like you have to be a hundred percent here and a hundred percent there and a hundred percent there so that you can kind of spread it out.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:53):
Let’s talk about your church. I have a lot of pastors that listen to the evangelism podcast and they’re looking for ways to get their church involved in reaching out to the community. How do you create an atmosphere of evangelism within a local church,

Alpha Hayward (09:13):
Pastors that wanna see more evangelists in their church have to lead as an evangelist. Your approach to ministry needs to shift to being very missional. So you have to be thinking more like a missionary than you are a American church planter and your agenda and focus becomes different. You’re, you’re not focused so much on getting people in the seats. You’re Mo you’re, you’re more focused on reaching the lost, and then having them have a love for Jesus to where they want to be discipled. So you, you just do a little bit of focus and, and shifting of how, how you think and just make sure that your heart’s in the right place, which is being very kingdom and being very mission based.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:01):
Now, I, I know that you put together a manual for how to have a day in a, in the park. Yes. And so people who want to take this idea and run with it, maybe do it in their neighborhood or, or, or their community. And I understand that the manual is on the, the website of the global network of evangelists. And so I’ll put a link to where, so people can download the manual, but kind of just give us a breakdown what’s in that manual. And, and what secrets does it share for doing one of these outreaches?

Alpha Hayward (10:32):
Sure. So what the manual will do is the manual will give you at, at, at the very least a starting place. And it’ll also encourage you so that you would know that you can do outreach and not have money, be the hangup some, so many times we think, man, I don’t have the money for that. Or, or we think that it has to be humongous in order for it to be good, but that’s not true. I would just encourage you to, to peruse it, kind of look at it a little bit, download it because it is free take from it, what you can use and then add to it. What fits your neighborhood? What fits your church, your community, or your missions trip that you’re doing take from it and use it the best that you can. You might even find some things that you would be able to modify to make it better.

Alpha Hayward (11:19):
So I would just encourage you to check it out and see it as a good, at anything else, a good starting place. And just also re just also remember this, that food and music are universal languages. You can go to any country and if you’re gonna offer food to bless people, and you’re gonna have some music there, that’s gonna help you attract some attention. And at even if it attracted 10 people, a hundred people, whatever, you’ll be able to use that opportunity then to be able to share the love of Jesus with anybody who would come for at least some free food and to hear some music.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:55):
That’s awesome. Well, I so love what you are doing day in the park, alpha Hayward. If someone wants to find out more about your ministry and about what you do. Sure. Do you have a website or a way that people can connect with you?

Alpha Hayward (12:08):
We do it is called the day in the park.com.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:12):
Awesome. Well, if you’re listening and you have a heart to do evangelism in your neighbor, your neighborhood they, they have some great resources to help you out. Brother alpha. Thank you for being on the evangelism podcast.

Alpha Hayward (12:23):
You bet, brother, thank you so much. And if anyone needs help, just reach out to me. God

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:27):
Bless you so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus. And I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (13:47):
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.

Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes

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Keith Cook | On the Go with Jesus

Keith Cook leads On the Go ministries. For over forty years, and in over forty nations, Keith has reached the unsaved through city-wide and local church outreaches. He is passionate about “doing the work of the evangelist” and about coaching the next generation of young evangelists.

Website: https://www.onthego.org/

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Keith Cook leads on the go ministries for over 40 years in an over 40 nations. Keith has reached the unsaved through citywide and local church outreaches. He is passionate about doing the work of the evangelist and about coaching the next generation of young evangelists.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
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. Welcome to the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:57):
Evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest Keith Cook from “On The Go Ministries.” Thank you for being with me today.

Evangelist Keith Cook (01:08):
Oh, it I’m glad to be here today. And at I’m excited about being with the most excited evangelist I’ve ever been with you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:14):
Well, thank you so much. I am excited about evangelism and you’ve been doing evangelism for so many different years. Tell me how did on the go ministries get started?

Evangelist Keith Cook (01:26):
Well, years ago, the Lord just put it on my heart. I was a young teenager, didn’t know any better, and God just started calling me and I didn’t know what he was saying. And I just felt like God wanted me to go out and tell everybody about Jesus. And I told my pastor and he goes, well, you’re an evangelist. And I said, that’s it. And I’ve been doing that since I was 15. And it’s been a wonderful, wonderful ride with the Lord.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:46):
And your ministry is very creative. You’ve developed many different methods and, and tools for sharing the gospel with people. Tell me some of the different ways that you have shared the gospel over the years of ministry.

Evangelist Keith Cook (02:02):
Well, we’ve tried just about everything. We’ve put together a list of about 200 different creative outreach ideas that we’ve heard from other pastors, other evangelists, other Christian leaders. And what we do is basically go in and talk to pastors and other evangelists and put together projects where they can select what kind of outreach methods they think will work in their area. Because we’ve always found out that it’s easier to get people to do what they think can work, instead of stuff, they don’t think can work, but I can tell you, Sharon, Jesus really works and God will give any Christian. That’s got that desire on their heart. He’ll give them the ability and the insight and the spirit to do it. And the results will be there. So we’re not living in a vacuum anymore. The power of God has not diminished any.

Evangelist Keith Cook (02:48):
And some of the, the neat ways that I like doing it, I like door to door prayer. That’s my favorite tool to work with the church to, to get them going door to door, talking with people or a person to person just saying, Hey, can, can I pray for you about something today? You don’t like today with the ER or the waitress or it’s, you know, just anywhere you happen to be, you can just say, Hey, how you doing? Can I pray for you about something? You know, when you introduce yourself, it’s just fun to do those kind of things. So we teach people how to do stuff. One on one, and of course in mass. And I’m called to be a massive evangelist, but I’m also called as an evangelist based on what the Bible says to also train people how to do the work of the evangelist. So we’ve tried to do that all the years down through the years.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:29):
So let’s imagine that a pastor calls you and, and says, Keith Cook, I heard about your ministry. And I want the people in my congregation to be more excited about sharing their faith. Can you come next Sunday and get them excited? What would you say to the congregation to, to get them excited about sharing their faith with others?

Evangelist Keith Cook (03:52):
Well, we really love to go into a church and, and try to work on their vision. The Bible says without a vision, people perish, and a lot of times churches think they’re doing evangelism and they think they’re doing missions. And really what they’re doing is they’re doing good church, but they’re not doing that final component of church, which is the going out and sharing their faith. And a lot of people are scared about doing that. So we talk with churches about let’s, let’s see what your vision is. And then we take them for that to, to show them some things that they can do in Avi, in evangelism, because there are so many things people can pray for people that we ask people, first of all, to just make a list of people they would like to see, come to know the Lord in a more meaningful way.

Evangelist Keith Cook (04:32):
Well, that’s pretty easy. Just make a list and then get them to begin to pray for them. Pray that they would come to know the Lord prayed for an opportunity to share with them, pray that they would get saved, pray that Lord would bless them, all these different things. They can pray and then begin to pray for themselves to see if they can’t be the answer to their own prayer, which is now, Lord, give me an opportunity to share Christ or share a scripture or share, you know, what, what Jesus means to me. And so we go from that point of just getting them excited about people. They want to see, know the Lord, cuz a lot of people never even think about it because they’re so afraid. You know, they don’t think they know how or, you know, we’ve recognize they’re about four reasons.

Evangelist Keith Cook (05:13):
People don’t share sin. They’re just obedient to God. One is that they’re also, they don’t think they know how and some of them just they’re just disobedient to the Lord. They don’t know how they haven’t been taught. And then some of them are just fearful and the Bible says, God, didn’t give us a spirit of fear. So we would go in basically and talk with the church about their vision. Do they have a vision for the lost and if not, why not? And then talk about how they can begin to pray for people. And then as they begin to pray for people, God will give them divine appointments of, of how they can share. And we’ve got some creative little techniques different gospel booklets, different. We have something we call a go card that has the gospel on it. So if you forget something, you can just look down in point.

Evangelist Keith Cook (05:56):
I got a lot of people. What if I forget this? And what if I get that? I’ll never forget. One time I was sharing with somebody and I got so excited cuz I just knew God said, if you share with them, they’re gonna get saved. And I was so excited that when I got down to the sinner’s prayer, I forgot the sinner’s prayer. And I had sort of fumbled a little bit, but finally, you know, they almost knew what to say, cuz God was speaking to him so hard. They go. So I’m just supposed to ask Jesus to be my savior. Yes, that’s it pray and ask Jesus to be your savior. So we have put a little tool together to help people. They get excited or they forget a scripture or they forget something. So they can just look down and naturally calmly just share without fear.

Evangelist Keith Cook (06:34):
And so it, it’s a pretty fun process to get a church on fire for the Lord and, and to see them get excited about missions and evangelism. We’ve discovered that if someone will go and just pray, the first thing that we do is get people just to pray in their neighborhood. Just walk around, praying, praying for divine intervention, praying for miracles, praying for God, to bless praying for, to hold back the forces of hell. And then we get them to also meet together corporately and pray for stronghold to be broken down. And then from that they get a little courage. So we don’t just take people out and throw ’em to the wolves and say, go, when everybody on this block, that’s what my youth director did to me right after I got called to preach. He just loaded me up in the van, took me down to the, the biggest hell hole in town and said, okay, you can’t come back till you’ve shared with Jesus, shared Jesus with somebody <laugh>.

Evangelist Keith Cook (07:23):
And so, you know, I, I went and tried to witness to somebody and of course I didn’t do any good cuz I didn’t know what to say. And but from that he said, see, you don’t know everything, you’re a teenager, but you don’t know everything. And I need to teach you how to share your faith. And so I was very eager then because I really wanted some, you know, my friends to know Christ, but I didn’t know how to do it. And so he calmly, you know, I’d meet with him once a week and he shared with me how to share my faith. And I didn’t know till I was like in my thirties that I was the only one he ever did that with because everyone, everyone doesn’t have that gift of the evangelist and or has that desire to do that. You know, most people run from this when I was running to it.

Evangelist Keith Cook (08:02):
And so if, if a church calls, we basically take ’em through some steps to where and answer some questions that they have, cuz they know most pastors know that people are scared to witness. They’re scared to, to get outside their comfort zone they’re they want the pastor to do everything. But the pastor can’t do everything we’ve got to as evangelists equip the pastor in the churches, how to do the work or it’s not gonna get done because you and I know that if we filled up a stadium every single night and all of ’em got saved and all of ’em were new folks that had never, you know, heard about Christ, unreached people, we couldn’t, it’d take like 180 years to get everybody alive right now. And we don’t have 180 years, you know, with COVID and stuff and that’s going on, who knows how long we have.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:48):
So we need to activate every believer to be involved in evangelism. Now, just recently, your ministry was doing some outreaches in Nevada, which is wonderful because I believe God is doing something new here in America and it’s time for America to turn to Jesus. So gimme some testimonies. What, what are some of the things that you saw God do in Nevada? Oh

Evangelist Keith Cook (09:11):
Wow. Well we saw number one, like 80% to 90% of the people that stopped to listen to our presentations of the gospel made some kind of life changing decision for Christ and it wasn’t high pressure. It was just basically telling them the truth and is just sharing Jesus. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:30):
I mean, that’s amazing that high, a percentage 80 or 90%, it just shows how much hunger there is for God here in America. And that people are ready to turn to God. If someone will just go and share the gospel with

Evangelist Keith Cook (09:44):
Him. Yeah. it’s so funny. We, we went into one situation where a gentleman just walked in the door, he walked in with his wife and he comes up to me and he says something to me and, and, and I in greeting him, I, I, God just told me to say something about alcoholics anonymous, just just have you ever heard of alcoholics anonymous? And the guy looked at me like, what are you talking about? He goes, I’ve been an alcoholic my whole life and my wife and I, we struggle with alcohol and he goes, and we’ve been asking God to do something about it cuz we don’t feel like we can do it on our own. And we go to the, the AA meetings and all these things and we, we need help. Well, that night he got saved and I, I talked with the pastor <laugh> just last week and he’s still engaged in church and they’re loving it.

Evangelist Keith Cook (10:34):
And they were quite old and, and, and they had been struggling with this, their whole married life and then talking to another pastor and he said, you were not gonna believe this after the festivals were over. And these weren’t humongous festivals, these were just small town, small communities. He says, but we’ve had 35 decisions for Christ just within our little church in the last six days says it worked whatever y’all did it worked. And I said, well it, we all worked together. We all, you know, we had, we had so many things, but we were just really sharing the gospel with people casually, calmly, not scaring ’em into, into heaven. <Laugh>, you know, scaring the hell out of them. We weren’t trying to do that. We were just trying to tell ’em the truth about Jesus. And we talked more about Jesus than we did about hell.

Evangelist Keith Cook (11:20):
We talked more about salvation than we’d get did about their horrible past. And they all knew. I mean, when we asked people, do you, have you ever sent, oh yeah. Are you proud of it? No. Can you think God can do something with you? No. We said, we’re here to tell you, God sent us to tell you that he can. So we saw miracle after miracle. We had one lady stop. She was driving down the road and she, she saw what was going on. She goes, huh. And she ran home and got her kids and brought ’em back and they both got saved. And it was just so amazing people, people, God was just blessing people. You know, we had no, no problems because God was just all over it. It’s so sort of similar to some of the things your ministry’s been doing.

Evangelist Keith Cook (11:58):
I know I’m gonna turn this on you. <Laugh> some of the cool things that you guys are doing in America are have the same component. You go to where the people are and you try to figure out ways to engage the people and tell ’em the truth about Christianity. Tell ’em the truth about Christ because our press agent <laugh> the devil’s press agent has been speaking for the church far too long, and we need to let the holy spirit be our press agent and, and get the word out because when the gospel gets out, when the holy spirit starts moving and our communities signs and wonders, follow them that believe. And when we let God take care of this and God direct us in our steps, it just seems to work. Of course it’s gonna work cuz God’s doing some things, but I believe America because of what’s been going on, people are upset, they’re confused, they’re hurt, they’re scared. And that is a perfect, perfect, perfect situation for revival. And I know your ministry’s trying to, to see a revival all across America. And I believe that you and all see it. If, if, if God will give us time and not take us too soon we’re gonna see it. I think in our lifetime.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:02):
Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, we were in Burl, Nebraska, just a tiny little place, 1200 people in the whole city, but seven churches got together and invited us to come and, and do a revival there in, in God move. And so small town, not very big crowds compared to what we see overseas, but yet people got saved and the, the pastors were so happy. We have Baptist pastor Methodist, Lutheran assembly of God, church of Christ, just all these different pastors gathering together and say, we need revival in our town. And so I, I think God is doing something amazing here in America. In 2017, we both went to the nation of Belize and we were doing a nationwide outreach there where we did 10 crusade simultaneously in the 10 largest population centers in Belize. And you went to the island of San Pedro, which is, it’s a party island, there’s 300 bars there and they told me three churches. That’s right. And so when they were telling me that and, and, and I said, we need to send an experienced evangelist to San Pedro. And so you got sent to San Pedro. You did a crusade there. Yeah. But that, wasn’t the end of the story. You’ve continued to go back. Tell me what have you seen God do since that time on the island of San Pedro in Balise,

Evangelist Keith Cook (14:24):
Well, there’s been a total transformation because when you had the vision to take the gospel all over Belise number one, they didn’t think you would include them. And nobody wanted to go there and you, you called and said, Hey, please, if you’ve ever thought about going and doing something with us, let’s, let’s do it. And you go there. And so I listened, I submitted, you know, this old guy submitted to you and went to the island and we did a gospel campaign right downtown. It was well attended. They, they loved it, all the churches, all the community, the Christian radio station, the dignitaries, the city leaders were all there, but after it was over we just felt like there’s something else that had to happen. And because usually what happens is the evangelist blows in, blows up and blows out <laugh> and that’s sort of the model.

Evangelist Keith Cook (15:11):
A lot of times overseas is that they, they see you once and then you’re gone and it was a good experience and they had fun, but there there’s it not in a lot of depth. And so they asked us if we would commit to coming back and helping them do some things that were on their heart. And we said, yes, if you will trust us and do evangelism along with those things, because the, the, what usually happens is after you do a great evangelistic campaign like that, well, then you start discipling the folks and then they don’t ever think about evangelism again. Oh, we got some new people. So let’s just run with them for a while. And then 20 years later, they’ll do another festival. Well, God doesn’t want, he wants us to be constantly doing those things. So we’ve done some things there.

Evangelist Keith Cook (15:53):
We were able to do a marriage enrichment week where on the go and the local churches provided a feast for all the couples that would come on the island. And we provided them. It was a high caliber classy event. And hundreds came couples. And we got to tell them the truth about how to live for God as a couple, and how to stay married and how to be faithful to your husband, your spouse, how to treat. And then, you know, folks were getting saved. We’ve done this. Of course, we’ve gone back year in and year out and helped with the children trying to help the children grow and mature. There’s some homeless situations there, destitute situations there, and we’ve tried to help, but the main thing is the churches have started engaging in evangelism and looking big picture. And even, you know, when COVID hit, we were just in the middle of, of taking all the suggestions that the churches had on things they wanted to do and try to help them implement those on the island.

Evangelist Keith Cook (16:54):
And so that’s what we’re starting to go back to do is to help them implement, implement some of the things that they’re wanting to do. And there’s just simple things like, like going house to house and checking on people and praying for people. It seems so simple, you know, in America, we, we can do that pretty freely, pretty easy, but there there’s two systems. There’s one you’re either really rich or really poor, you know, you’re there to party or you’re there trapped and that’s sort of how the people feel on, on the island. And so they want us to help them address those issues. And they’re, they’re really, we’ve done some things right in the middle of the biggest gangs. We’ve gone right into the middle of the gangs and talked with them and tried to engage them. And one on one, we’ve taken street chaplains in to do some things that are a little bit harder, you know, when you’re dealing with opposition and the Island’s getting tougher to, to witness on because of the poverty. It’s, it’s really, you know, when the tourists aren’t there, there’s not a lot there and people are stealing and things. So we’re trying to teach them how to love on their neighbors help their neighbors and, and become affirming of each other. And so just pray for the church and beliefs.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:03):
One of the things that I really love about your ministry is that you identify young evangelists and begin to mentor them and help them in evangelism. And so what is some of the advice that you give to a young person who maybe feels like they’re called to be an evangelist and doesn’t know how to get started?

Evangelist Keith Cook (18:23):
Well, number one is to ask questions and I tell ’em be bold. I said, call any evangelist, any ministry that you’re, that you have any knowledge of and say, what can I do? How can I help? I said, I tell ’em volunteer for everything. Fellowship, life produces life. And I learned from Billy Graham years ago I called and said, I’m an evangelist. And they said, we know that <laugh> they already do about me. And they started inviting me to come and be at little volunteer opportunities. And I learned so much and I became friends with some of them. Then the same thing with Louis pal, I called my friend Louis Palau. And, and his ministry just said, come on, we’re having a conference, come on. And, and from that, I’ve made friendships that have lasted forever. Almost every, every friend active friend that I have right now came through other evangelists.

Evangelist Keith Cook (19:17):
I mean, my friends are evangelists used to in the old days, evangelists were in competition with other evangelists, not so nowadays we all need each other. And so I would say getting fellowship with everybody, but also don’t move away from your local church. The, one of the things that you, you don’t have to start your own big, huge organization. You can be under a church’s umbrella. You can be under another evangelist umbrella. We have a lot of young guys that work under our umbrella until they’re, you know, they feel like they’re, they can five have their own 5 0 1 C three. Yeah. So we just said, just do ministry start, preach everywhere. You can. Every invitation. I’ll never forget. When I was a young guy, I turned down an invitation, cuz I thought it was not quite, you know, gonna be any good. And the phone didn’t ring for like two months, <laugh> nobody called.

Evangelist Keith Cook (20:07):
And I was praying one day and I said, God, what’s wrong with these crazy pastors? Why aren’t they calling me and crossed my mind? The Lord, let me see me hanging that phone up saying who do they think they are asking me to come do that? And I’ve only got five minutes to speak and you know, I can’t, it’s like, yeah, you got in the flesh and I’m not gonna bless you if you stay in the flesh. So preach all you can and, and really connect with an evangelist because every evangelist I know right now, that’s doing anything for God needs help. And they need young people and they need young people that are teachable and who are willing to work. And I guarantee you, if you connect with an evangelist, that’s doing real evangelism, that they will provide you opportunities to help and be a part and you’ll do more and see more than you could ever dream.

Evangelist Keith Cook (20:57):
And the sky is the limit with the Lord. He will, he will do things. I tell you what our interns and our associate evangelist get to do far more than me. The other day, my wife and I were praying. And I started crying because I can remember when, when my son was getting ready to be born, the Lord told me that my children would do greater things than I ever thought of doing. And we were praying and I jumped up and I said, I just had a vision of all the young men and young women that have come through these doors and only have one son. And he’s doing great things, but it’s got, I said, Joan, we’ve got hundreds of children. <Laugh> all over the world. And they’re out doing all these things and it is such a blessing. And it’s a blessing to the kingdom of God when when you can, you know, just the other day, someone from Nevada that was part of our outreach. The last two years said, I feel I’m called to be an evangelist. What can I do? And I said, well, go back to your pastor, tell your pastor, do all you can do preach all you can preach, but we’d love to have you be a part of our team until you’re ready to start your own organization. And so submit to some other person submit your pastor or some other evangelist and learn how to do the work. The evangelist, cuz it is work. Yeah, it is work.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:15):
So if someone’s listening and they wanna find out more about you, maybe get connected to you, maybe even support your ministry. What’s your website. How can they find out more about you?

Evangelist Keith Cook (22:25):
You can go to www.onthego.org. And we would love to, to talk with you. And of course they can also go to your website and you’re doing some great mighty things, training people. And we would just, we love going down the road with you and your wife and your team. Some of the best things. I mean we met in Malawi. We did a mission together and then you invited me to be a part of police. And now we’re together on some committees that are doing evangelism around the world. And it’s just been such a blessing to meet you and to see what God’s doing and the best is yet to come.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:59):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Evangelist Keith Cook (23:02):
I’ve enjoyed it so much. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:04):
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

Speaker 2 (24:24):
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.

Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes

Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Spotify

Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Google Podcasts

Find The Evangelism Podcast on Stitcher 

Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Amazon Audible

The Evangelism Podcast is also available on iHeartRadio

Chas Stevenson | Evangelism in the Local Church

How can the local church effectively be involved in evangelism? How can the pastor motivate his congregation to witness to the lost? What are the best ways for a local church to evangelize? In this episode, Pastor Chas Stevenson from Houston Faith Church answers these questions…and more.

Houston Faith Church Website: https://www.houstonfaithchurch.com/the_pastors

Stevenson Ministries Website: https://www.stevensonministries.org/ 

Transcript:

Pastor Chas Stevenson (00:03):
My name is Chas Stevenson. I’m with Houston Faith Church. I’m the pastor there. My wife and I been pastoring for 14 years before I was an evangelist. I was a Christian and being a Christian meant that I was filled with the holy spirit and able to witness. And so I started trying to catch up to all the other Christians fishing for men. I found out that Jesus said, follow me that I’ll make you a Fisher of men. So just as a baby Christian, I thought I could, I gotta start doing this. And it was a little scary at first, but I, I felt the obligation to Jesus, to practice fishing and to fish for men and to catch men. And then I realized so few Christians are actually doing that. And when I felt the call to ministry, I went ahead and prayed through and found a certain aspect that I could help churches.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (00:52):
And so I would approach churches that I can help. All of your churches members become the Christian. They were meant to be and help them begin to share their faith with others and have better success than ever before. So that was how I felt Christianity or being a Christian crossed into getting everybody involved in evangelism. I think the secret to the, to the world harvest the secret to changing your nation, your state, your city, your community is found the secret to the whole thing is found sitting right in the church seat. His name is the believer. The believers is the key to everything. All right, when we take surveys in churches, we ask how many of you came to Christ through television and maybe one out of a hundred hands will go up. How many of you came to Christ through radio? Usually zero, these days out of a hundred came through radio.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (01:44):
How many of you came to Christ? Because a believer shared their faith with you. 90% of the hands go up. And then some people raised their hand. How many of you got saved in a church? And so the other 10% are done in church. The believer is the key. 90% of people that are saved, get saved through the witness of a believer. Even if it’s a parent or a friend or a relative, the believers is the one that’s been spreading this gospel all along. Anyway, even though I know that television does, does get some saved, they do a good job teaching, but that’s not the secret to the harvest. It’s not the key to really evangelism. So in our church, we, once we find the solution to evangelism is in the chairs, usually in Christians who have lost their purpose, Christians so often sit there for years frustrated, not, not knowing what to do.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (02:34):
What am I called to do? I’m waiting for my call. I’m waiting for my door to open. Where’s my title. What position can I have? What’s my grace. What’s my gift. And then that goes on for months and years. And they just sit there kind of stagnated when the truth is, if they have the holy spirit, they’re ready. If they know one scripture they’re ready, or we could say this, if they’re saved, they’re ready. The lady that Jesus got saved at the well, she ran on day one, didn’t know anything about anything. Except I found the Messiah. She ran got the whole half of the city saved and the other half came to Jesus and got saved one day. She evangelized the whole city because she found the Messiah. And so really the secrets there, it’s, it’s about keeping that as, as the, the vision, the focus, the emphasis that every one of us here are obligated, responsible, and able every Christian in the church, able to reach others tomorrow for the Lord, Jesus Christ, you know, in, in a natural way, sheep bear sheep shepherds, don’t bear sheep, but sheep bear sheep.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (03:38):
And so we can’t rely on the pulpit, even though there was a time when that was most important, we can’t rely on the pulpit to win all the souls. Okay. It’s great. If you bring a center to church, hopefully they’ll hear the message you get saved, but I found just as many or more get saved after the service with the believer in the car, driving away from church, that Believer’s important. He’s the one that needs to lead people to Jesus, even if they didn’t respond to some altar call. And so we can’t rely on the leaders to get everybody saved. Every Christian should be a healthy enough sheep to lead someone else to Jesus. So if you think about it, a female sheep, who’s not barren in the natural. There’s something wrong. Who’s not barring sheep. A female sheep should bear some sheep. And if not, they’re gonna get eaten, right?

Pastor Chas Stevenson (04:26):
You gotta, you gotta produce here. So Christians who aren’t barring sheep, there’s usually something wrong there not to put people down, but there’s something spiritually wrong, not, not healthy that the pastor or the shepherd has to recognize. I gotta get my sheep healthy so that they will naturally bear sheep out there. Some of it’s so simple but we’ve exempted so many for so long. We’ve exempted so many Christians because they didn’t feel the quite the boldness, right? I’m not the extrovert. And so I can’t do that kind of thing. Oh, we, we turn every introvert into a disciple. I mean, into a, into a Fisher of men. And it’s beautiful to see even the non extroverts be able to share their faith. One on one with some friend over the coffee table and it’s Glos or strangers. I mean, we’ve got introverts approaching strangers, handing a track, leading them to Jesus.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (05:17):
So everything we do is kind of designed to empower the believer and remind the believer. And there’s a little bit to that, but the secret is the believer. Absolutely. We don’t have an evangelism class where we’re expecting everybody to come to and train for 12 weeks and then send you out to the streets to knock on doors. That’s what we don’t do, cuz that’s way too intimidating and too scary. And it only touches about 2% of the people, only those who are already interested in the evangelism really come to that. The rest think they’re exempted. Okay. So the key is this. The key is to present the true commission of Jesus Christ as if it applies to everyone, everyone after the holy spirit and power has come upon, you’ll receive power and you shall be witnesses that’s for everybody. So we have to dispel a lot of the myth that peop people have been under for quite a while.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (06:09):
Christians have just been mistrained in just little inconsistencies with scripture, thinking that an evangelist is, is who wins souls. And I’ve discovered that an evangelist and a soul winner are two different things. They could be the same. They’re not necessarily the same, a soul winner or a Christian witness is one who leads others to Jesus. An evangelist is an office that someone stands in that has a different grace, a special grace for mass crusades and or reminding the church of their great commission. But that’s an office to ed to five, the saints, remember in Ephesians four he gave all five offices for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry. And so the evangelist is designed to Edify the church. Whereas the believer is designed to win a sin, even though certainly the evangelist would have an extra grace and power and anointing to do mass things and crowd things.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (07:06):
And with, with gifts of the spirit on purpose to lead many, many to Jesus, but that’s different than a witness. And that’s where we’ve lost a lot of people, they think, well, I’m not an evangelist. I can’t do that. Wait don’t you aren’t you able to talk at lunch with a friend about different things? Yeah. I can do that. Well then you can share Christ at lunch with a friend. And so that’s where the same thing with like prayer ministry. We’ve said that, well, they, they have a special anointing to pray and they have a special anointing to win souls. So we’ll send them on their own. I don’t really feel called to the prayer group or the street group and that’s okay, but we can’t exempt everybody else. Let them think. Well, I’m not, everybody’s supposed to pray. There’s no gift of praying and there’s no gift of soul winning.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (07:52):
You realize that there’s no gift of soul winning ever mentioned in the scripture. The gift is the holy spirit. And he’s been given to everybody to present Christ with authority and with a lively, you know, resurrection power. And so the whole thing is, is dispelling some of these rumors another rumor I was thinking of is some people have been taught that you’re only supposed to be led when sharing your faith. Like I’m gonna wait till the holy spirit leads me before I ever say anything. You’ll be waiting a long time. You’ll be waiting a lot. And if you really want to be led, if you really want to be led, just read mark chapter 16, where it says go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And you can just stop right there. He said that to you and I didn’t, he, every believer needs to realize he said that to.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (08:41):
So for the rest of my life, all, all I need to do is tell every single person the gospel and I will have obeyed the spirit. I will have been led by the spirit because he led the, the writing of the scriptures, right? So we have to start somewhere. So instead of having a red light on all the time, waiting for it to turn green, where God says, now you can preach the gospel to somebody, have it on green and be willing and ready to tell everybody until it turns red, that’s a whole different perspective. Isn’t it? And then there’s the fears and the uncertainty and the intimidation of in a conversation. So we, we help everybody get through that, but there’s some secrets in the church that over time everybody can come along there. You know, we do at our church have a monthly evangelism event that we get U different people to lead.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (09:30):
Whatever is on your heart. Well, I want to go to the park and do an outreach. Okay. Everybody can go to the park with you. We’ll have anywhere from 10 to 40 people go on these events. And we encourage some of the young Christians about it that, Hey, if you’ve never done this and you’re a little scared go to one of these and hide behind somebody don’t, you don’t have to say a word, do anything you can just watch. And before the day’s over, they’re like, wow, this is so easy. It’s so easy to lead others to Jesus. How do you do it? You ignore the ones that don’t want Jesus and you, and you’d spend time with ones that do, this is not about you arguing Jesus. And this is where so many people, they back off office. Like, I don’t know how to argue.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (10:10):
Jesus. You’re not supposed to do that. You’re just looking out there for the ripe ones. Right? Think about how many times the word of God’s liken to the seed and the farmer to the believer of the preacher, right? What does a, what does a farmer do when he plants? Let’s say tomatoes, farmer, plants, tomatoes in the ground and waters and waters and waters and takes care of. And he doesn’t do, he doesn’t try to pull a fruit day. One. He just waters and waters and waters. And he doesn’t try to start pulling green tomatoes. If the tomatoes not rip, don’t pull it. I mean, I know some people want the fried green tomatoes, but if the tomato’s not right, don’t pull it. It’s too hard to pull. It comes. You know, you pull in the vine, you’re ripping things, your, your, your hands get all smelly with vine juice.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (11:00):
On the other hand, when the tomato turns red or starts to turn red, it’s easy to pull it. You just kind of tap it and it’ll fall off in your hand. Same thing with soul winning. You don’t force the green ones that aren’t ready yet. All you’re doing is looking for ripe ones. How do you know if it’s a ripe one? You ask them, would you like to receive Jesus today? If they say, no, you say, okay, bye-bye or you tell ’em some nice things or whatever, but you don’t spend time on those that aren’t ready. Makes it easy. Doesn’t it? So there might be 10 people that aren’t ready. You’re looking for the one that is ready. The scripture says that to that the Lord ordained such that that should be saved, right? I think every day there’s a group that’s ordained and ready to be saved.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (11:42):
We’re looking for those. So when we do our outreaches, we’ll preach to a thousand people and 50 will be saved. We did it. We didn’t fail 950 times. We succeeded a thousand times preaching and telling is success. Planting a seed is success. So we, we have to remember, don’t expect everybody get saved and look at your successes as those that you reached. Okay. One final thing for pastors. There’s this feeling about evangelism that if we’re gonna do an outreach, we’re doing it so that we can get people into our church. I found that as a, almost a hundred percent failure rate, maybe that’s exaggeration, but it’s a high failure rate. Okay. Especially when you’re leading people to Jesus, if you’re doing an event and, and making a big deal and showing people your church, maybe you get some church members, but those who receive Jesus on the streets, don’t normally go straight to the church where the person was that saved them, or that led ’em to Jesus.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (12:46):
Okay? So you can’t expect that otherwise everybody will be discouraged. Wow. We’ve led all these people to the Lord. And nobody came to our church. We have, what are we doing? You need to look at it that way. You’re planting seed, where you don’t reap. Somebody else will reap where you sewed. But if you’ll to get involved in that, then God will let you reap where you didn’t sew. And so don’t look at it as I have to get them in my church. Typically, when a person gets saved or a center gets saved on the streets or out in public their first thought is I’m gonna go to church with so, and so my friend who’s been asking me to go for years, my aunt, they run to somebody familiar. Who’s going to a Christian Church. Okay. You can encourage ’em to do that. They’re not gonna go with a stranger.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (13:31):
So outreach to strangers, don’t expect them to, to come into your church and, and just flock in because you were out there getting ’em saved. That’s one of the myths that kind of, you know, put the, put the breaks on evangelism. It looks discouraging. Don’t feel like that. Look at it. As we succeeded, we reached everybody in our city and that’s our goal. Reach everybody in our city. As a senior pastor, I think there’s one key ingredient to causing evangelism, to explode and continue in any local church anywhere. And it does depend on the pastor. It does depend on the leader because he kind of runs the show, runs the meeting and keeps whatever vision he’s got going. He’s the one. So here’s, here’s the secret really? And it happens in our church. We, we get this working in our church and it’s amazing the results we see, I call it the four year principle.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (14:25):
And, and what I do is I, I look back at the book of acts after Jesus departed, after he sent the holy spirit, after they were filled and started the ministry what was the local church? What did it look like on day one? What did it look like on week two? When people would come to church? What did the four year sound like? Okay. what was the conversation at church? It certainly about the news of the day or the, the sports teams or anything like that, which that’s all, that’s fine. But because of the excitement around this gospel and the resurrection of Jesus, I think the conversation in the foyer was something like, Hey, what did y’all do this week for God? Hey, did you hear about Peter and John at the gate? They got that guy healed. Yeah. I heard about that.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (15:11):
That was awesome. Hey, listen, what I did, I, there was these teenagers walking by on the street. I led him to, I told him about Jesus being resurrected. They didn’t know that he got resurrected. And then I baptized him in the, in the pond right there, man, what did you do? What did you do? And we’re doing what he said. So there was this whole, we obeying Jesus conversation. I just have a feeling. That’s what happened at least for a while. At least until Jude said, come on, you guys earnest Lee contend for that faith. It was once delivered to the saints. Remember that? And so that aspect just kind of reveals. We need some convers, some right conversation in church. All right. So what we do at our church or what’s so I think it could be anywhere is we have a time, every service to mention the works we do for God.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (16:00):
Whereas a lot of churches will have testimony time. What did, what, what did God do for anybody? Did anybody wanna testify? We specifically say, what did you do for God this week? Anybody wanna say, and people will begin to say what they did at work. I passed out a track. I talked to my friend, I made a phone call. I led the so. And so to the Lord, how many of you led someone to Jesus? What’s our soul count? Did we convert anybody this week? Did we turn anybody to Christ this week? And I’ll look through the congregation in one hand and another hand. How many, how, where at, where did you, where did you get ’em saved at? And so we’ll have four or five, almost every service saying I did this. I led someone, my coworker, my dad, you know, I prayed for the sick.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (16:44):
And so now all of a sudden, the whole congregation’s thinking what who’s doing, what I thought it was, you know, that’s where you just dispel the rumor that the pastor does all the works, right? And so if, if church members look around saying, if she can do this, I can do this. And so this spreads, and, and it’s just a little 32nd, 62nd moment in the church, but it reveals the emphasis we’re placing on true evangelism, every church service. It seems most pastors spend a few minutes talking about tithes and offerings. Isn’t that right? Sure. Give a scripture testimony, talk a little bit, encourage people to give. At least you’d have a time for offering. The question is why do we do that? Well, because we know money is required. It’s important for the local church to continue to isn’t it. Well the people know that’s important, how they know that’s important, cuz we talk about it every week.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (17:50):
If we would just kind of take a step back and think of what’s most important to heaven, even though money’s important, it’s the great commission it’s reaching the whole wide world. And so the most important thing is spreading this gospel and then raising up saints, discipling people. We ought to talk about it all the time. So along with the ties in offering, and that’s really one of the best times to do it, one of the best times to talk about soul winning is while the offering’s being collected every once in a while, stop the offertory song. And while the buckets are getting passed, talk about soul winning, let people share their stories to each other. That’s how fire spreads. You have to let people say and talk and then fire can spread. And so it’s, it’s really the five minute charge or the 62nd charge.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (18:40):
All it is is just a consistent reminder. Every week. Sometimes we do it twice a week. Our midweek service, same thing. We’ll have a time shared stories every once in a while on a Wednesday night, somebody will have a question. You know, I was talking to so and so, and they had, they presented this to me. What am I supposed to say to that? So I’ll get a little teach time in there of, of explaining how to approach questions or hens or sins or naysayers or whatever. But the, the point is that we need to talk. We need to emphasize it somehow, not the whole message. Don’t do a six weeks course that you only do once every five years, then you miss everybody keep this as part of the life of the church. Otherwise the evangelism will, will, will die back down to nothing.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (19:23):
And so, and, and we need evangelists coming through to remind us, there’s a special thing that when evangelist says it, they just fire people up about it. And so we need the evangelist gift in the local church, which I think is a, is a missing element of many churches because we’re thinking, oh, evangelists get people saved. And I know that in my congregation, there’s not so many people and I can give an altar call myself, why do I need the evangelist? You need the evangelist because Jesus said you needed the evangelist and he needs to come through your church to motivate people and remind people of the great commission. So pastors do have some responsibility here and I’d say one more thing to pastors. If pastors, aren’t also being a witness every day, everywhere they go, how are their people gonna follow that? If the pastor’s into music, the people are into music.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (20:08):
If the pastor’s into, you know, Bible study, the people are in the Bible study. If the pastor’s a big prayer, the people are prayers. If the pastor’s a real witness for Jesus, the people will start following the pastor ought to have a story. Every once in a while, one preacher long ago said that if pastors would start winning souls every week, they wouldn’t have to have a book of illustrations every Sunday <laugh> to prepare their message. And so this has to become reality that leading others to Jesus is what Christians do. We are fishers of men. All of us are fishers of men. And the fact is most Christians aren’t fishing very much. Maybe once a year, they’ll find the perfect opportunity to fish and that’s not acceptable. So pastors have to get some of these things ironed out so that we don’t let people become the dead sea.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (20:56):
You can’t just keep, keep pouring into people if they can’t give it out. So, you know, if you don’t have any exit rivers, you just get stale. And so many Christians are unhappy. We found the happiest. Christians are the soul winners we found the most faithful are the soul winners. And that’s what makes it all go around. I think that’s the most exciting thing about it all is that we were all in the same thing together, which is impacting the world for Jesus. One of our visions at the church is that every believer has a vision for worldwide evangelism and personal evangelism. So I’m not negating worldwide evangelism and missions and big crusades and stuff like that. But I also want people to have a personal vision for evangelism. What can I do? And everybody, every single Christian can do this stuff, but we talk about it.

Pastor Chas Stevenson (21:48):
So we get ’em testifying. We have a sole goal of individual witnessing and that’s where we find the biggest success. So we, we see church members slowly but surely over six months, sometimes a year after about a six month period, many people come up to me and say, I finally said something. I said, God bless you at work. And then another six months goes by. And they said, I finally gave a track down. And a little bit later, they said, I finally led someone to Jesus and I couldn’t believe it. It was so easy. I just shared my heart and I cared about ’em and they wanted to receive Jesus. Right? And so it takes time and we don’t pressure people or make people feel guilty or act like they have to go knock on doors or go to the streets. Even though we do have outreaches, we don’t act like that’s the only thing we do. The main thing we do is everybody’s a witness tomorrow after church. I can’t go where you go. So you have to, you have to take care of all the people where you’re at. So that’s the key is giving ’em a vision and a purpose for, for lifestyle evangelism, wherever you are.

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