Kevin Tallaksen | Permeate Evangelism Spreads the Gospel

Kevin Tallaksen is being used by Jesus to reach people in the Northeast of America. He is sharing the Gospel on the streets and training churches to be bold in sharing their faith. Today he shares with us some of the secrets of doing  effective street evangelism. As you listen you will learn key questions that help start conversations about God with people from many different religious backgrounds and even those who have no religious background at all.

Learn more about Permeate Evangelism: https://www.permeateevangelism.com/ 

Summary: 

Kevin Tallaksen leads Permeate Evangelism, a ministry focused on creating a culture of evangelism within the church. Tallaksen shares his testimony of how he was radically saved and called to street evangelism, especially in the largely secular Northeast region of the United States. He discusses effective strategies for street evangelism, such as using signs with thought-provoking questions to start conversations and listening to people’s worldviews before sharing the gospel. Tallaksen also describes his approach to training believers to share their faith, focusing on the heart motivation and practical skills for articulating the gospel message. He emphasizes the importance of helping people count the cost of following Christ rather than just pressuring them to pray a quick prayer.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Kevin Tallaksen is being used by Jesus to reach people in the northeast of America. He is sharing the gospel on the streets and training churches to be bold in sharing their faith. Today he shares with us some of the secrets of doing effective street evangelism. As you listen, you will learn key questions that help start conversations about God with people from many different religious backgrounds, and even those who have no religious background at all.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:47):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:09):
Daniel King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Kevin Tallakson. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Kevin Tallaksen (01:25):
Yeah, thank you for having me. Super excited. Love evangelism and love what you’re doing of getting the word out.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:31):
Well, you lead a great ministry called Permeate Evangelism. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at permeate?

Kevin Tallaksen (01:41):
Yeah, so permeate evangelism, our desire is to create a culture of evangelism within the church. And a lot of times in the culture is, oh, just invite ’em to church or the pastor or the evangelist will share the gospel. But we believe in Ephesians four where the evangelist is actually partially to equip the church. And so we’re trying to create every believer to be on mission and to be sharing the gospel in their everyday life. And we do that through three areas. The first is trainings, in-person trainings, how to share the gospel in everyday life. We do that at a lot of churches and groups. We have a training coming up in New Jersey this week with over a hundred people, 16 churches represented. So we’re excited that God’s taking territory in that sense. We also do social media content, different trainings, how to share your faith, examples of street evangelism. And then the last thing that we do is we go and do, we do evangelism together. I believe, and we can go more into this, but street evangelism is not for everyone. I don’t want everyone to be street evangelists, but it’s a great place for people to learn how to share the gospel on the streets. Then they’ll see, wow, this is powerful, this is simple. I’ll go do it at my workplace. So I almost see it as a training ground in addition to the impact that it has to unsaved people as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:05):
That’s amazing. Well, let’s start kind of by talking some about your testimony. Kind of tell me where you came from, how Jesus saved you, and then how you found out that you were called by God to be involved in evangelism.

Kevin Tallaksen (03:21):
Amen. Alright, so I grew up in a church. My dad was an elder, good solid biblical church. Heard the gospel many times. I was turned off by, got into some drugs, drinking, partying in high school, planned to do that in college. But my parents were like, you need to go on this one mission trip. And I was like, I hate God, why would I do that? But the people on that trip impacted me the way they love Jesus. I was like, whatever they have I want. And lo and behold, they told me as Jesus read the Bible, really impactful conversion experience at age 18, God really just completely transformed my life from drunkenness and he freed me from that addiction on the spot. And I went and told my friends. So from the early age, my first time I got, when I got converted, I basically said, look, I got to follow Jesus and I can’t do that stuff anymore.

(04:16):
And I went and told my friends. So it was almost from the first day, go and tell someone. But then about three weeks later I got baptized and I went off to college and I got mentored by a fantastic pastor and also a street evangelist. And I always tell people I got ruined by the street of evangelists. And so I was on the street sharing the gospel within probably two months. But one thing that’s really impactful to me with evangelism, about three months after I got saved, I was playing ping pong with a Chinese student at my college. I love ping pong. And I was like, Hey man, do you know who Jesus is? Because he just radically changed my life. It’s like, who’s that? And he had no idea. And so that really drove me. So many people, not only in America but around the world, don’t know Jesus.

(05:02):
And so that stuck with me with that. So long story short, I went into was continuing to do evangelism, teaching Bible studies, leading youth groups, was an elder at my church, always had a passion for evangelism. But it came to a point about five years after I got saved, I was doing a lot of apologetics and I felt I was convicted. I was not sharing the gospel, I was just trying to win debates. I was like, okay, let’s reel this back. But also I was like, I’m here with one person or two people sharing the gospel. What if I got 10 people to come out with me? And so that’s what stirred me about 10 years ago. I need to get other people sharing the gospel that’s much more effective than just one person. So then I started doing a lot of trainings and God kept increasing the work even though I was just simply doing what the Bible said and just showed that God was in it. And that’s when permeate was born about a year and a half ago where God’s like and people telling like, you got to do this. And so that’s where we’re at today. A little bit of a high level overview.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:05):
Now you’re on the east coast of the United States and it really is a mission field. A lot of people think of the great awakenings that happened over there in New England and that day is long passed. It’s very secular. And so you’re interacting with people that really need Jesus. Tell us some of the experience of your interactions and what you’ve seen God do.

Kevin Tallaksen (06:33):
Yeah, it’s a great clarification because America is obviously huge. It’s almost multiple countries within, and really the northeast, there’s not many believers. My mentor, and we always talk about probably less than five, maybe 10%, but probably less than 5% are believers and following Jesus. And so it gives you an idea that there’s not many what we’ve seen and especially college campuses. I really believe that’s an important time period to look at and it shows where the culture is and also where it’s going. It’s been shocking. I would say about half of the people that I talk to when I ask the question, do you know who Jesus is? And the way we approach it, I do questions rather than just preaching at them. About half the people don’t know who Jesus is, or maybe if they’ve heard of him, which most do, they really can’t tell what he did or really more detail of why he did what he did. And so I really believe it’s an unreached people group in the Northeast in a lot of ways that the urgency needs to be to get there. But I really believe in what permeate is doing is such a small thing of God’s greater work. I’m seeing churches realize we need to get outside these walls and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so I am so excited. I think the harvest is truly plentiful in the Northeast.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:59):
Amen. You are right in the middle of the harvest field. So you’ve been doing a lot of street ministry and usually when people have an idea of a street evangelist, they picture someone who has a megaphone and they’re yelling in people’s faces, is that what you’re doing? Or what strategies are you using when you’re going out in the street to do evangelism?

Kevin Tallaksen (08:24):
And as flip one 18, Paul’s like whatever the motive is, as long as they’re preaching the gospel, great. But what I’ve seen in the Northeast, as soon as you have a megaphone and stuff, people usually tune you out. So what we’re trying to be creative, so our most common strategy is to have signs with questions. I really believe in evangelism. We need to use words we need to proclaim, but there’s also scriptures that we need to listen and understand. And so we have questions such as what percentage of people are good? People love judging morality or what is the purpose of life? Or we have this sign where it says two words, two words to describe your life. And God, what I’ve seen is let people share what they believe, what their worldview is. I listen intently caring about what they say, and then when you can listen well, you gain a trust. And then I can proclaim the gospel. I can connect what they are saying to what Jesus in the Bible says. And we’re seeing people come so much further in the walks and their conversations. And if we were just preaching at them, there’s times I street preach, there’s times where it’s effective. But by and large, if we can listen first and communicate to people where they’re at, it’s been so much more effective as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:42):
I really love that in the Constitution we are guaranteed the right to free speech. And so we have the freedom to speak, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people will listen. And so in order to get someone to listen, you really have to show that you care. Someone said one time that people don’t care how much until they know how much you care. And so really by listening to someone, you can meet them at the point of their need with what they need at this moment from God. And then as you listen, you show that you care and then you can quietly direct them in the way that the Holy Spirit leads you towards God. So as you’re listening to people on the streets there in Northeast America, what are some of the things that people are saying? What are some of the concerns that people are talking about?

Kevin Tallaksen (10:38):
So definitely still in this culture, there’s a culture that a lot of people still go to church when they’ve grown up. So that hasn’t left completely, but there’s definitely a lot of church hurt, if you will, of a misunderstanding and bad experiences. So we talked through that. One of the main questions too is why does God allow suffering, especially in the world environment, we see the starving people. The war is why does God allow it? Where is God? And so we can communicate about that. We have some, I think effective approaches to that as well. A lot of people also don’t believe in absolute truth. And so this is important. If we just went right to Jesus and say, Jesus is true, or Jesus is good and kind and loving and forgiving, they say, well, that’s nice for you but not for me. And so what I have to start with before going to the gospel is, do you believe that there’s one absolute truth or is it up to each person? And so this relativism is very rampant within our society. And I would argue not just in the Northeast, I’ve been to other parts of the country that before we get to Jesus talk about that this truth that I’m communicating to you is not just for me because it changed me. It’s for all people. And so reasoning with them that absolute truth is a thing, and then this Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. So relativism is very rampant.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:09):
And when someone starts asking questions from that type of worldview, what are some of the things that you say to bring them to the truth of Jesus?

Kevin Tallaksen (12:20):
So with the relativism, I just let them repeat after themselves of, and I ask them, how does that make sense if someone else disagrees? What if someone has a different view of morality? And they’re like, we really don’t know. And so a lot of it is not me with a zinger that has this answer, it’s reasoning and asking them why and what leads you to believe that and to show them examples of that. So I think that’s the first thing. And then I tell them, look, the relativist worldview is actually not rational. And most people would disagree because if their best friend was murdered, they would absolutely and objectively say that that was wrong. And so I try not to go that extreme, but sometimes we do. And then I tell them, look, there is an objective standard of morality. There is an objective truth and it is God.

(13:15):
And then I go through the gospel asking them who Jesus is. I ask him about what his repentance and belief mean. And it’s amazing that people that came up and were basically arguing relativism, they don’t even question it because we led them to show that it’s irrational and we led them to the gospel. And I’m seeing people just completely undone after sharing the gospel. So it’s not like I have this perfect worldview like argument. It’s I just presented the gospel in Romans one 16. The gospel is the power of God. And so my thing is show them the holes in their worldview that it doesn’t make sense, and then bring them to the gospel that transforms their minds and ultimately their heart.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:02):
Another component of what you do is training believers to share their faith with others. And you mentioned that you’re about to do a training at a church in New Jersey. Walk us through that. What would you tell members of a church that would help them encourage them to share their faith and then help them to get over any fears or hindrances and then giving them what they should say? Kind of walk us through the whole

Kevin Tallaksen (14:33):
Process. Yeah, absolutely. The first thing, first and foremost, we talk about the heart because I really believe evangelism is an overflow of the heart. It shouldn’t be just because we have to or whatever. So we talk about openly, why do we not share the gospel? Most times it’s fears of different things, but I have people talk about it within tables and we take polls so everyone sees, oh wait, we’re all scared. And I think that lessens it of it’s not just me, it’s all of us. And then we talk about the whys, the commandments and all that. But one of my favorite passages that I love to go through, two Corinthians five, that we share about the fear of God, and I don’t believe we should just not fear. We should redirect our fear of others and of even our pride and all these things redirect.

(15:23):
And if we fear God, like Isaiah and Isaiah six where he fell down his feet, what did Jesus respond with? He touched his lips and said, go and I’ll give you words. And so fearing I don’t tell people, don’t be scared, just man up or whatever. I say, look, fear God. And then second Corinthians five, it says, the love of Christ compels us. And so this is not a fear that drives us away, but drives us towards God. And then the two Corinthians five, it also says that we are ambassadors. We have no power in and of ourselves to save people, but we are the sending party, the sending entity being God has all the power that we would ever want or need. And so similar to an ambassador from us going to another country, they’re just usually a business guy, but because they have the sending entity power, that’s where it is.

(16:14):
So we start with the heart issue, that process, then we go through the practical of how to articulate the gospel. I’m convinced most Christians don’t know how to articulate the gospel, the true gospel. And I’ve asked many, many Christians, most don’t know. And then we go to how to start conversations, answering the common tough questions. So equipping them. We do different breakouts on different world religions as well. Really what my mindset is with training is yes, there’s place for deep apologetics. I love talking through that. But the majority of Christians, they just need to be taught the basics of the gospel, the heart of it, and the next steps. They don’t need to be taught mind stuff. They need to be empowered and encouraged by the Holy Spirit and the gospel. So that’s a little bit of how we approach it. Of course, it looks different at every church and training, but that’s a little bit of how we approach.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:11):
You mentioned that often people have trouble articulating the gospel. Could you share the gospel with us? How do you present the gospel?

Kevin Tallaksen (17:22):
Sure, yeah. And there’s not one transcript or way you approach it, but I like to start from the beginning, the creation that God created us, and it was good that he created us for relationship with God. Adam and Eve then rebelled, sinned against God, and so do we. We’ve all lied, stolen, and the result of that is the fall and death and ultimately hell, that we are separated from God as Isaiah 59, 2 says, but God in his love and sent Jesus, who is fully God, fully man, lived the perfect life preaching good news, he came ultimately to die in our place for our sins. Not only dying for our sins, but rising from the dead, proving that he is God, proving that he is conquered our sins and conquered and satisfied the judgment of God. He calls all men and women to repent change of heart and mind towards believing in Christ alone for forgiveness. That is not by works, that we are saved, but by grace through faith. Then not only that, he adopts us as his sons and daughters, and one day will be glorified in heaven forever and we’ll inherit eternal life. And so that’s in a nutshell, a couple of the key features of the gospel that I believe are important.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:36):
That’s wonderful. And it’s beautiful. It’s always wonderful to hear the gospel presented. Okay. What are some of the different hesitancy that people would have about witnessing and how do you help them to overcome those fear?

Kevin Tallaksen (18:54):
Yeah, would you say specifically about street evangelism or just witnessing in general?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:59):
Let’s do both. I mean, street evangelism probably people are intimidated about going out in a wild arena just to talk about many different faiths.

Kevin Tallaksen (19:11):
So with street evangelism, what I’ve seen is I just tell people, you don’t have to say one word, just come. The only thing I ask is sit behind me and pray I need it. What I’ve seen from that is incredible. Not everyone jumps in and starts talking. I just remember one engineer guy, not a street evangelist guy, he just sat behind and listened. He was like, that was incredible. And he went back to his workplace and he shared the gospel with 10 of his coworkers in two weeks, multiple went to Bible studies all because he heard just some evangelism taking place in the simplicity and power of it. So street evangelism, the way I get people to come out is listen first and let the Lord do the rest with every day evangelism. I really believe teaching that heart of evangelism and redirecting our fear to God helps, but also giving testimony examples.

(20:06):
I am even working with some pastors of sharing at church services, examples of church members sharing the gospel just to encourage, wait, that person did it. I can do it too. So that encouragement, but also very helpful tools. So I have this business card even of starting spiritual conversations that people seem to really like that it’s just like 10 questions front and back with some explanation of simple questions like, what’s your spiritual background? You can ask that to anyone. And so giving some tools to help people start conversations. I’ve seen help people to share the gospel in everyday life, but it’s not like if you go to a training, it’ll be great. It takes time. We do a training at churches every year like refreshers and stuff. And so changing a culture and a mindset, it takes time, but it’s worth the lift. It’s worth the time because this is the great commission.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
So you mentioned your card with 10 questions. What are some of the other questions that are good for opening up spiritual conversations?

Kevin Tallaksen (21:13):
Yeah, so what’s your spiritual background’s, Greg? Because no one’s going to be offended at that. Have you ever thought about eternity? And so again, the questions are designed to be open-ended so they can share their view or also like, Hey, I really believe in prayer. Can I pray for you in any way? So again, that simple. But then some of the indirect ones, those are spiritually direct. I’ve actually found the simple question of what did you do? This weekend is not spiritual at all. I was in corporate America for 10 years, and I would just ask that for people and I would share, Hey, yeah, I hung out with friends, watched some sports, and I went to church on Sunday. It was awesome. It’s amazing when you just mentioned about your faith that it’s important to you. People are perked and you can tell without asking a spiritual question that they want to learn more.

(22:07):
And they’ll ask maybe, oh, what church do you go to? Or, oh, I used to go to church. And then it’s a total open door. So we try to ask questions that are open-ended, listening to them, getting to know them genuinely, and then bridging that to the gospel and spiritual conversations. One of the biggest things with evangelism in everyday life is you have to be intentional about praying for it, about being aware of your surroundings, listening well, and God is so good at giving us doors to walk through. We just need to be bold and looking at the door to walk through it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:45):
How do you feel about bringing people to a point of decision where you’re asking them to pray with you for salvation or to make a commitment to follow God?

Kevin Tallaksen (22:57):
Yeah, there’s a lot of different views on that, and I think there’s grace in it for us personally, especially with street evangelism. I’ve seen it done where a lot of people just, just repeat after me pray. Not that that’s bad and it doesn’t invalidate a salvation because it can do that. What I’ve seen is a lot of people say yes because they want to end the conversation, and there’s sometimes a wrong motivation from the evangelist that, oh, I got another number. So what we try to do is challenge them to count the cost, read the Bible, plug them into Bible studies. And we’ve seen that effective in real converts, not only converts, but disciples. The great commission doesn’t say to make converts to disciples, but at the same time, we have to be careful to not make it hard to enter the kingdom of God.

(23:43):
So we do have seen people saved even on the streets, but one guy, I remember last year at the boardwalk in New Jersey, we shared the gospel. He was literally just crying as we were talking about Jesus. So I was like, something’s up with this guy in a good way. And he was saying, I’ve heard people that were Christians, but I never knew the message. And he’s like, this is what I’ve been looking for. And so what I did, I said, look man, I’m going to pray for you, and I would challenge you to pray to God yourself based on what you heard. I prayed over him, prayed that the Lord would fill with his Holy Spirit. He then prayed and it was the most simple non-Christian East prayer, but it was so genuine. And I really believe that if we’ve been faithful in preaching the gospel effectively, they will know what to say to God. And so giving them space to pray, but without forcing them or kind of putting this unneeded pressure on them, and again, there’s grace and other methods, but that’s our view on that is, yes, God can save immediately, but let’s share counting the costs and let them in their own heart and mind and words call out, cry out to Jesus because he hears them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:53):
Amen. That’s wonderful. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for sharing on the Evangelism podcast today. If someone wants to find out more about you or to invite permeate evangelism to come to their church, how can they get in touch with you? What’s your website?

Kevin Tallaksen (25:14):
Yeah, so our website is permeate evangelism.com. So simple with that. And then my email is kevin@permeateevangelism.com. We’re also on YouTube X, Instagram, Facebook. So anywhere permeate evangelism is, and like you said, we travel. We’re actually, we are in India. We are going to North Africa to do some training and work. I’m training some African, so we pretty much are global now, and of course in the us. So anything we can do to help spread a culture of evangelism within the church, we want to be there to support the church. We believe in the local church. So glad to talk with anyone that’s interested.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:52):
That’s awesome. Well, I so love your heart, Kevin, and thank you so much for sharing about reaching people.

Kevin Tallaksen (26:01):
Amen. And thank you for your heart and your work in the kingdom of God. And we pray that more people will come to know Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:08):
Amen.

Evangelism Podcast Host (26:09):
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Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:13):
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 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 (28:33):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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