1 877-431-4276Gola Tiruneh | Evangelism in Indonesia
Gola Tiruneh shares his journey from being born in Ethiopia to becoming a Canadian citizen and eventually settling in Indonesia. He discusses how he felt called to do missions work in Indonesia, despite initial hesitation from his family. Gola and his wife Esther have been involved in various ministries in Indonesia, including conducting crusades and reaching out to unreached tribes. They focus on preaching the simple gospel and praying for miracles to happen, in order to bring awareness of the gospel to different areas. Gola also expresses his desire to train local missionaries and encourage local believers to be evangelists. He mentions the challenges of working with Indonesian believers, who may have fear or hesitation when it comes to evangelism.
Learn more about Gola Tiruneh: https://ggni.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Gola Tiruneh from Indonesia.
(00:13):
Now, you were actually born in Ethiopia.
(00:16):
That’s right.
(00:17):
And then you came to Canada, became a Canadian citizen at a young age, and now you are living in Indonesia. Tell me about that journey. How’d you end up here?
Gola Tiruneh (00:29):
Well, yes. I was born in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. I left there at a young age. My family has always traveled mainly for my father’s work. And so we ended up in India for a couple of years. It was about 10 years old at the time, and soon after, two years after that, my family decided to move to Canada mainly for education. And I just completed grade eight at the time. And I arrived in Montreal, Canada and had to learn French so I can continue with my grade nine. So I did grade nine in French and grade 10, 11, 12 finished in Ontario. So my family is in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. That’s where I spent most of my time. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:32):
Let’s talk about Indonesia. How did you end up coming here to the nation of Indonesia?
Gola Tiruneh (01:39):
Well, it started during my high school years. The Lord started speaking to me through many different ways, through people would point me out of a crowd and start to prophesy over me going to these places, preaching to thousands of people. And that used to scare me actually, when I used to get those kind of words. And then the Lord would speak to me through dreams and visions and I would see myself in front of Asians, people doing ministry. And so it was a process for the Lord to kind of help me along. I did have a desire for missions, but at the same time I also had this fear in me of going so far from family. Indonesia is quite far from Canada. It’s literally the other side of the world. So I remember when I made the decision to go to Indonesia, my family was not for it, majority of my family. And even I was a little bit not sure what was going to happen. I wanted to go to Ethiopia to do missions, but I ended up to Indonesia in 2004 through a Bible school that I went to in Canada, in St. Catherine’s area near Niagara Falls. And ended up here in October, 2004, about 20 years ago now. And within a few months I loved Indonesia. It’s just everything turned out to be totally different than what it was in my mind and ended up staying here and doing.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:27):
Now you met your wife Esther, here in Indonesia. She’s Indonesia. And how long have you been married now? We’ve
Gola Tiruneh (03:34):
Been married for 14 years.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:36):
And your son Benjamin? Yes. Is 10 years old. Is 10
Gola Tiruneh (03:40):
Years old.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:40):
And so how did God bring you and your wife Esther together?
Gola Tiruneh (03:44):
Well, we met in a church, the church that my team was working with when we first came to Indonesia. And she was also involved in her church. She was a full-time ministry in the church. And so we always bumped to each other. And she was also one of the translators for guests that come to speak. So she translated for me a couple of times and that’s how we met. And six years later we got married.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:17):
And tell me a little bit about your wife’s journey. How did she become a believer?
Gola Tiruneh (04:21):
Well, my wife Esther is from a Buddhist background, and she was saved during the Christmas service in her church. Somebody invited her and it was a long process for her also, but she made a decision to be a believer in her teams also during her teams. And then she joined the church. She’s been working in our church since, and that’s what we ended up meeting.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:54):
Indonesia is a very unique nation, 270 million people. It’s the fourth largest nation in the world by population, and it’s the largest Muslim majority nation on earth, even bigger than Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. When people think of Muslim nations, they often think of that part of the world, but Indonesia actually has more Muslims than any other nation. And it’s a nation of islands over 17,000 different islands. That’s right. And so your ministry here, you’ve gone to many different islands to talk about
Gola Tiruneh (05:34):
Jesus. Yes. So we do a few things here in Indonesia. We do crusades, we call ’em festivals, festival of love. And we’ve done those different parts of Indonesia. They’re set up to reach people outside the church in a very friendly way. And we just focus on preaching the gospel very simple and pray for the sick, expect miracles to happen in these events. We have seen wonderful things that God has done, miracles such as deaf ears opening and people that couldn’t walk and being able to walk. And that brings a great awareness of the gospel in an area. And we have had Christians and non-Christians come into our events and to hear the gospel and to experience miracles. So a lot of what I’ve been doing is sowing seeds into areas, unreached areas. I love to go to unreached tribes. That’s another thing that we are doing in Indonesia currently, actually, we’re in the process of researching about 40 unreached tribes. And we are also formulating a strategy through partners to friends here and also overseas to reach these tribes. And so I spend a lot of my time in doing these crusades in villages at small towns and also working with these tribes. We also have a discipleship ministry that we are doing on a weekly basis in our hometown in Sumatra. And also through our pastor seminars, we encourage local believers to go out and evangelize.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:40):
And so this is real cutting edge ministry because you’re going into tribes that may have zero believers in the entire tribe. Exactly. And you are getting to know them, asking questions. It’s actually very valuable research so that people can know where the most need is. Right.
Gola Tiruneh (08:05):
So that’s my hope, number one, to create an awareness about these tribes. Most of them are very small, maybe like a couple of thousand people in a few villages. So they’re kind of hard to reach. Sometimes it takes days and you have to get on a boat and then get on a motorcycle, go trek into the jungle. But it’s the work that needs to be done. And my heart is eventually to train a local missionaries that will go there and be a witness to them in some form. And we are in the process of doing that. And also we hope it will create an awareness so that maybe there will be other people that will send missionaries there eventually, and so that the gospel can reach to each and every person.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:09):
Now in the Bible it says that every tribe and language, every ethnic group will be represented before the throne room in heaven. And so that’s why this type of ministry is so important because if they’re going to be in heaven, they need to hear the gospel. And if we don’t know who has heard the gospel, who hasn’t heard the gospel, we need to ask questions to find out who are the people that we’re missing that we want to take to heaven with us.
Gola Tiruneh (09:44):
That’s true, that’s true. And sometimes you got to go there to see what’s happening, especially these areas where there’s no believers, there’s no churches. Somebody needs to be there and live among the people and have some kind of a gospel representation. You may not be able to preach the gospel right away, but just having someone there will create opportunities for the gospel to be heard of. And my heart is, especially these tribes that are completely a hundred percent nonbelievers, at least we’ll get one or two families and then it will start to kind of snowball from there. And the best thing I have found in my experiences, Indonesians, reaching Indonesians is way more effective than us coming, for example, me coming from Canada. And they know the culture and they also know how to talk to these people. And that’s my heart right now is to raise local people and to motivate local believers to be missionaries.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:09):
And so one of your desires is even to start a training school That’s right. For people that would from Indonesia come to be trained in how to reach different people groups.
Gola Tiruneh (11:20):
Exactly. Yeah. Well, in Indonesia, the work of the evangelist and the missionaries kind of always the last thing on people’s thoughts. Many believers that want to go into ministry want to be pastors, which is great, but it’s mostly done in Christian areas. So there’s a lot of church planting happening, but in Christian areas, and it’s kind of hard for missionaries to go to these places because number one, they don’t know what to do
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:58):
And they stick out.
Gola Tiruneh (11:59):
They stick out. There’s also, of course, the financial thing. So we are trying encourage and motivate people to work in these kind of remote areas. And by God’s grace, we are finding people that have a heart for that. And we are already starting to partner with local people to reach some of these tribes. I’m visiting now.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:25):
Yeah, last night we were eating dinner with a local evangelists, and there was one woman there who said she just came back from a village. She lived there for three days and 35 people. She was having Bible studies with them and very primitive. Then she’s sleeping on the floor and no electricity, no plumbing. So it’s difficult ministry, but it’s extremely valuable
Gola Tiruneh (12:51):
Very much.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:52):
Now, several times you’ve mentioned the gospel preaching the simple gospel, and you’ve seen God work through that. Give me the gospel in a nutshell. What is the gospel that you preach?
Gola Tiruneh (13:07):
Well, the gospel is the good news of what God has done for us through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it’s actually the finished work of what Jesus has accomplished through his death, through his life is death, resurrection. And it is the story of how God redeemed mankind. So it is a simple but powerful story and we just focus in our events to, we don’t so much talk about religious stuff, we don’t compare religions, we don’t do any of that. We just simply speak about what Jesus has done for all people. And we encourage people also to experience this gospel. It’s not gospel of just words, but it’s an action. It’s in power. So I love the book of Acts and some of the things that the disciples did. And so what we try to do is in our events for we help people to experience how good God is through miracles.
(14:21):
And so there’s a scripture that says, come taste and see how good the Lord is. So let people have a taste of how good our God is and what he has done for us and how powerful it is. And especially, we always have miracle testimonies that we try to bring up interview people during our events and so that people will see that God is actually doing something. This is not just a story from 2000 years back, but this is happening now. And that brings an impact to the village or a small town or even the churches in that area. It would encourage them to believe and to continue to do the work that way.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:12):
So right now we are in the city of Kupong, and tonight the gospel festival begins. We went by to look at it last night, and it’s this beautiful plaza area right next to the ocean. And there were lots of vendors out there selling food even before the festival begins. There’s lots of people there, lots of kids running around. They had games and toys for the kids. And so what are you expecting to see God do here in Kupong this week?
Gola Tiruneh (15:44):
Well, I believe there is going to be through what is going to happen. People are going to have a clear representation of what the gospel is. And I’m believing for miracles. I’m believing for people to experience miracles that will lead to ’em opening their hearts to the gospel. So we’ve had events where deaf ears have opened people deaf from birth and things like that. And that causes people to attention, to put their attention to the gospel. It is kind of like the story of when Philip went to Samaria and preached the gospel and says, when people saw the miracles, they put attention to his words. And that’s what I’m expecting, that they will be a moment where people will realize, okay, this is real. Jesus is real, and what is my response to this? And so by the end of those three nights, my prayer is that people will realize, okay, this is not just religion. This is actually happening now and I need to respond to this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:06):
Now, one of the things as an evangelist I think we’re called to do is to challenge the church as a whole to focus on evangelism. What response have you seen from the churches here in Indonesia? Do they have a heart to reach out to the loss? How are you encouraging them to focus on people who are
Gola Tiruneh (17:33):
Lost? Well, it is mixed response, right? So it is a challenge sometimes working with believers because of some history of maybe things that have happened in the past. And there’s a little bit of fear, hesitation to do evangelism. So most believers tend to just stick to their group or to their churches or their communities. There’s a few tribes in Indonesia that were reached by missionaries like 150 years ago. So they’re mainly Christian. So most of the believers in Indonesia are from this few tribes that are
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:23):
Been, but there’s many tribes here.
Gola Tiruneh (18:24):
There’s many tribes, and it’s from the 217 million, maybe 15 to 20% is Christian, so the rest of them are still yet to be reached. So it’s hard for believers at times because of may be fear or they don’t know what to do or how to approach other nonbelievers. So our festivals actually in a way help that to show them, okay, this is how you do it, or let’s do it together, and kind of helps build confidence in them to go out and do more outreaches. So really, our festivals are always been done in partnership with local churches, and that helps also to bring in enthusiasm, especially when they see, when the Christians see the miracles. Also there’s something that happens and say, wait, we can do this too. We can also preach the gospel. So that’s what we hope will happen also through these events, that it will revive the church and inspire the church to do evangelism in that area.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:39):
Well, it’s absolutely amazing the work that you and your wife Esther are doing here in Indonesia. If you’re listening and you have a heart for Indonesia, I’d encourage you to get connected with Gola. If someone would like to support you or their church would like to adopt you as one of their missionaries, what’s your website? How can they find out more information about you?
Gola Tiruneh (20:03):
We do have a website. Our ministry is a registered charity in Canada. It’s called Global Good News Initiative. The website is gg.org, gg ni.org, and you can go there and you find all the information you need, and you can be a partner through our charity in Canada. Yeah,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:29):
And are there opportunities for people to come to Indonesia to do evangelism or to work with you?
Gola Tiruneh (20:36):
Yes. Yeah. We always welcome people that have a heart for Indonesia, and we can do what we can and what is possible for us to do so that we can open doors also for people. So I’ve worked with different ministries in the past and we’ve had, yeah, we had a good experience also partnering with people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
That’s awesome. Well, let’s finish by praying for Indonesia, but instead of praying in English, you’ll pray in Indonesia, and let’s just pray for God to bless this nation.
Gola Tiruneh (21:21):
Okay, let’s do that. Alright. Hallelujah. Han Sadia, Indonesia, then Indonesia, they are. And Jesus sai. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:44):
Amen. Well, thank you Gola so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Yes,
Gola Tiruneh (22:49):
Thank you for having me. God bless you. Thank you.
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Brigada Today | Hacks for Great Commission Christians
Doug Lucas edits the Brigade Today website and e-mail list. The goal is Brigade is to identify and promote resources and people that can help Christians fulfill the Great Commission. If you are involved in telling people about Jesus internationally, you will benefit every time the Brigade e-mail hits your inbox.
Subscribe to Brigade today: https://brigada.org/
Read more about Doug Lucas and his mission work: https://teamexpansion.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Doug Lucas co-edits the Brigada Today website and email list. The goal of Brigada is to identify and promote resources and people that can help Christians fulfill the great commission. If you are involved in telling people about Jesus internationally, you will benefit every time the Brigada email hits your inbox.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:36):
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 evangelist, Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:01):
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, Doug Lucas, thank you so much for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Doug Lucas (01:14):
It’s an honor to be here, Daniel. Thanks
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:16):
Brother Doug. For many years I’ve been receiving emails in my inbox.
Doug Lucas (01:23):
I’m so sorry from, please forgive me,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:26):
Brigada… these emails are full of very important resources for missionaries, for people involved in missions, for people who have a passion for the Great Commission. Tell me a little bit about Brigada and, and what the focus of these emails are.
Doug Lucas (01:49):
Sure. I was serving as a worker in the, what we would now call the former Soviet Union, uh, back in 1991. And I would see these, uh, refugees that would come in from Central Asia building homes and the place to which they were returning. And when they did, so they would work as a team, as a unit, and they would even pass the buckets of concrete or whatever to more the foundations in a kind of a brigade form and in the language that they were using. The word was, uh, briga and it stuck with me that they were, they were doing a kind of a bucket brigade. It all worked together toward this common cause. And when I came back, uh, shortly afterward, I was asked to lead the run up to a big missions convention that was trying to create a lot of, uh, momentum toward finishing the task of world evangelization. And it, uh, it led me to, to kind of think about doing that together across churches, across streams, across orgs. And so I propose, well, why don’t we start, uh, this conversation between each other, uh, maybe just a weekly, uh, some kind of weekly thing that could bring us together. And we got really good, uh, reinforcement from a ton of other people in several circles and started up in 1995, uh, with that idea. And it’s been weekly ever since Daniel, and that’s where we got the name Brigada.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:12):
So if someone is a missionary or passionate about world evangelism, who wants to be involved in the Great Commission, why should they go and sign up to receive emails from you? What, what are some of the benefits that they would receive?
Doug Lucas (03:40):
Brigada. It’s a, an eclectic, uh, collection of resources for people that are both goers and also sins for people who are active in cross-cultural work overseas, as well as those who are advocating and praying for the great commission to be accomplished in sending countries. And so I think that they could, they could end up liking it because out of every week’s, uh, version, hopefully they’ll take away at least one new resource or conference or some kind of, uh, uh, you know, app or idea or trend, maybe some new piece of information that they can get. And it’s, it’s a free resource at the end of each year. We ask folks, uh, if they wanna participate by, by pitching in on the expenses, and we raise just exactly the expenses we need, and we don’t take any extra money. Uh, if people gave money, I, I suppose we need to return it or put it toward the next year, but that’s never happened beyond the minimal expenses that are need just to run it. And it’s always, uh, it’s always been a lot of fun. It’s been going weekly since, uh, January 95. People have told me before that it might be the longest weekly easing on the internet of any kind. I don’t know if that’s true, but some people told me that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:59):
Well, I’m really impressed with all the work that you put into this and how much you’ve helped so many different people that are involved in the Great Commission. I really like what you, you say that it, these are hacks for the Great Commission. And so let’s talk about like some of the different hacks that you’ve put out in the last year or so. What are some of the different features and articles that would really help missionaries? Uh, more recently,
Doug Lucas (05:28):
Some of the, some of the ways that Brigada is sort of different than maybe another typical eine is that one of the things we do is we throw out a sample of something that we found that works, and then we say, have you found something better in this particular genre? So we might throw out an example of, say, a website that short-term teams can use as a way to build their momentum before they go and, uh, you know, have you found something better? Well, the next Brigada user might comment, yeah, but this one lets them raise funds. And the funding goes through the, through the, through the website, and they only charge 2% for the funding. And then the next guy gets on and says, this one lets them raise funds and it’s one and a half percent plus, they also do newsletters. The people are sitting.
(06:17):
And so what you get is this kind of aggregated set of knowledge about particular genre. And we’ve done things about, for example, travel agents and travel services. We’ve done, uh, trip cancellation insurance policies, which ones are the best we’ve done, uh, what are the best ways to start new churches and multiply groups and multiply disciples, and where’s the best place to learn about that? And what’s the best book about it that you could read? Um, what’s a, an agency that helps you raise support and trains you how to raise support as a missionary? Well, what’s an agency that trains the people that train people to raise support? You know, all the, all the apps and the services for not only the kind of retail goers, but also kind of the wholesale ciders that operate at the, at the cinder level. We have a lot of folks who are very popular in the Misso Nexus world and the, the world of finishing the task and the world of, of, uh, Bible translation and a lot of folks that are kind of out of the old days of what we used to call the Association of Church Missions Committees.
(07:37):
We have a lot of local churches involved and a lot of international people. At one time, I think a guy did a survey about 10 or 15 years ago and found that half of regatta’s readership are international workers in places like Europe and Africa and Asia, Australia, New Zealand, all around the world, since it’s a lot of fun and it’s kind of a global stream that says, let’s get this done.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:59):
Well, if you’re listening and you have a heart for missions, I’d encourage you to go to brita.org and sign up today. And you can also look at past archives of recommendations for various services that are really beneficial that, that missionaries need to know about. It is very important to, to know best practices and which websites and which apps are the best ones to work with. And there’s no time for one person to keep up with everything. But through Brita, you can have recommendations from a wide variety of people who are out there in the field working. And so that’s, that’s it: www.Brigada.org. Now, Mr. Doug, you are very involved yourself in the great commission and leading people to Jesus, uh, through, uh, your, your ministry team expansion, uh, which can be be found TeamExpansion.org. Could you tell us some about the, the overall vision and, and, and mission of, of what you’re doing? Buratta is just one part of that, but, but talk to me about, uh, what you’ve been doing, uh, around the world for so long.
Doug Lucas (09:10):
Thanks. Thanks, Daniel. Brigada is kind of like crowdsourcing missions information and trends and resources, but that, that, that’s not how I’m paid. You know, my day job is actually to work at team expansion where I serve as a president. We have about 400 full-timers in 50 countries. And what we all do is try to make and multiply disciples and churches among unreached people. So when I try to write Brigada , um, I’m writing as a practitioner myself rather than as some marketing person that’s trying to start some website that I can someday develop into a full-time gig. I have no, you know, designs at all to try to do websites full-time. It’s kind of moonlighting on the side to try to share kind of one beggar telling another beggar where to Find Bread. Team Expansion is a mission organization in its own right. That started in 1978 in a little prayer meeting in a, in a dorm room.
(10:06):
And we all signed our names by different countries on the map. And, and, uh, the rest is history. I started out at the lawyer’s office from day one as the, as the president has somehow gotten stuck with the job ever since. And I’m always willing to hand it off to anybody else that wants it, but nobody else has wanted it yet. And we keep growing and we keep, uh, learning. Most of our workers are involved in simple practices that reproduce. We don’t have large, for the most part, large institutions and, and big properties. Were just simple reproducing disciple making movement strategies in, uh, unreached areas. So mostly among Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, atheists, animus, those are the places where we work. We’re based with the Louisville, Kentucky have a little 61 acre campus here where we, uh, spend time praying and, and do retreats and training people to be able to go in the missions is what we do.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:04):
You have a tremendous focus on reaching on reach people groups and reaching every tribe, nation people with the gospel. What are some of the, the things that you’re finding are most effective at reaching into sometimes very difficult areas to, to talk to people about Jesus?
Doug Lucas (11:26):
You know, Daniel, the thing that’s helped us the most is just simply embracing the tools, the practices, the strategies of disciple making movement, uh, strategy. So dmm, and you could sum those up into, uh, maybe, uh, a handful of practices, a lot of prayer for, for the lost, uh, focusing on helping people obey rather than simply trying to transfer academic content. Um, trying to share a lot about my story or God’s story. In other words, abundant evangelism just everywhere. And just, just always involved in sharing that story, uh, training other people to do the same. That’s a big emphasis in disciple making movement strategy. And then, uh, gathering people into groups, small groups that would utilize discovery, Bible study type, uh, approaches, uh, three-thirds groups, some people call. And so focusing on simple reproducible groups as a means of being the motor for church growth.
(12:31):
And then, uh, I guess multiplying those groups and focusing on multiplication instead of just me always thinking that I have to be the one that adds, making sure that I’m trying to train this new believer so that she or he can multiply as well, and trying to do that out to many generations. And then, uh, focusing on growth among all those people so it’s not, uh, a mile wide and an inch deep, but instead everybody’s growing deep roots and reading a lot of scripture on applying it. So that’s kind of what we’re focused on. That would be the simple practices we would recommend. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:06):
Now on your website, it talks about statistics on unreached people groups and, uh, is, as I said, 7.84 billion people in the world today. I think now, maybe a few days ago I heard we’ve gone over 8 billion people, right? It says that there’s 17,409 known people groups, and 7,402 of those groups are considered on reach. K kind of explain the criteria for why one group would be considered reach and another group might be unreached.
Doug Lucas (13:38):
Yeah, it’s a great question. We, uh, have largely followed the kind of the industry norm of saying that an unreached people group would be a significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have an affinity. They are perhaps linked by a, an ethnic or a language, uh, likeness with each other. And it’s like the largest number of individuals through which the gospel could flow before it encounters a barrier of understanding or acceptance. So what that means is you could use basically one simple strategy, and it could flow as fast and as hard and as long as it could go. But when it hits that wall of the next language group, then it might take a different, uh, startup in that next language group. Well, that would be defined as an unrich people group. And if you use that definition, that’s where we get those, uh, numbers that you mentioned, probably 7,000 or so, it’s hard to be exact, but around 7,000 groups that still don’t have a viable chance to know about Jesus.
(14:47):
And the typical statistics that you’ll hear used are somewhere between 2% or 5% or less of that group would, would claim to be, uh, an evangelical Christian of any kind. So they’re, they’re basically, by self definition, are they claiming to be a follower of Christ and active in doing that? Well, if that statistic is 2% or less, and if the place where they live doesn’t have some kind of a nominal Christian, uh, followership anyway, like a, a giant, you know, kind of cloud of Catholicism or some kind of, uh, adherence of Christianity, then that people group probably has essentially zero chance to hear about Jesus, you might as well say. And those are the groups, uh, through whom we focus now in this day and age, talking about literally right now in these years, we’re kind of adding in the idea of focusing on unreached places as well. So it’s gonna be unreached people and places as we go forward. That’s kind of the direction in the future. And the places would be simply, you know, districts or states or villages that don’t have a church. So people couldn’t hear about Jesus there either.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:04):
And why do you feel that it’s important for the church to pray for unreached people groups and then to, to start to engage them? A lot of people when they first start getting interested in missions, they might go on a short term trip to, to Mexico. And of course there’s, there’s lots of, of churches in Mexico, but why, why should the church care about these outreach people groups, and why should we put resources towards that area of outreach?
Doug Lucas (16:29):
It, it is, uh, a great, great question, Daniel. I’m glad you asked first because of course, we want the church to grow into all those peoples and places because it’s the vision that, uh, John records in Revelation seven. You know, it’s the promise of the end of the ages. In fact, was it Matthew 24 14 or so, we’re told that the gospel will, you know, be spoken and preached to every person, and then the end will come, um, the every nation, and then the end will come. Well, the, the expectation is that God is sort of leaning against the guardrail of heaven waiting for something to happen, and he’s waiting for apparently every single nation to have had a chance to hear. And then revelation seven, the vision will happen. All people’s, all nations, all tribes will be gathered and there’ll be representatives from every nation and tribe standing before his throne in a white robe.
(17:33):
There’s no way we can have that vision accomplished until we go to all those places. Then a secondary vision is we know that when the gospel does travel there, people can have peace and they can be happier. And in general, life picks up, you know, they have a hope, and that’s important. But then a third reason we do it is because Jesus said to, I mean, it’s just a simple command. In Matthew 28, for example, uh, 1920, Daniel Jesus said, make disciples of all nations. And you know, that word for nation is not the word that we would have expected it to be in English. If we were to use the word nation today, we think of a political nation, but the root word back then, it was a word that’s more likely would’ve been translated ethnic group. In fact, they didn’t even have political nations like we have today back in Jesus’ time. So these would be tribes or casts or kindreds. And if Jesus said, make disciples of every ethic group, you know, teach them to obey what I’ve told them to do at every ethic group, I just figure we ought to be about it. We ought to be doing it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:43):
Amen. Well, if you want to learn more about reaching on reach people groups, I encourage you to go to team expansion.org, find out more about Doug Lucas and about reaching unreached people groups. And if you wanna support reaching Unre people groups, I encourage you to go and support their ministry. Mr. Doug, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I appreciate it.
Doug Lucas (19:07):
It’s an honored, Daniel, thank you for doing it and wish you best in, uh, all of the stuff that you produce. Thank you for the work that you do.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:34):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today, I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (22:55):
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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Daniel Bäckrud | What to Do When God Shows You a Vision
Daniel Bäckrud is young but he has already visited many countries to preach the Gospel. God gave him a vision of an island in Indonesia and he found an unreached people group on that island. Today we talk about his plans to reach out to this unreached people group.
Connect with Daniel Backrud on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daniel.d.johansson.1
Learn about Go Out Missions: https://gautmission.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Daniel Bäckrud is young, but he has already visited many countries to preach the gospel. God gave him a vision of an island in Indonesia, and he found an unreached people group on that island. Today we talk about his plans to reach out to this unreached people group.
Evangelism Podcast Host (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.
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 with me, Daniel Bäckrud. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Daniel Bäckrud (01:08):
Thank you for having me. I’m so glad to be with you today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:11):
So we are together in the nation of Turkey in Istanbul, and we have both come here for a conference with ace, the Association of Campaign Evangelists. And so this is an organization that is dedicated to preaching the gospel through gospel campaigns in, in many different parts of the world. And they are identifying evangelists, they are encouraging evangelists and giving evangelists opportunities to go to different nations. And so you actually got connected to them when you were very young. Tell me the story of what happened.
Daniel Bäckrud (01:52):
Yeah, so when I was in Bible school at, in my early twenties, I was picked up. There was one of the evangelists in the network who saw the gift in me and he welcomed me to, to this network and gave me the training I needed. And one of the organizations inside the network was training me as a trainee for, for first one year. And then I was sent out as an evangelist inside this network. And, you know, all the different evangelists and their experience and the teaching I’ve got and the access to different fields, what I have been able to travel and preach. It has been so valuable for my, my own ministry and my own journey and the work I’ve been doing for God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:36):
So you had a period of training first. Can you tell me what that looked like and what were some of the things that you learned?
Daniel Bäckrud (02:42):
Yeah, so I was traveling on, on campaigns first as just to watch. And then I started to doing warmups to, to pre preaching on other campaigns. And then I got at my third campaign, I got the one of the nights on my own to preach. And, and my fourth campaign, I had the whole campaign myself. So it has been a, a progress of training where, where I learned how to, how to preach, how to do an call, how to pray for the sick, how to show the testimonies to to be clear and, and to, to be so that people can, can really sense that the, the testimonies.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:23):
What was the first country that you went to and how did you feel when you first stepped out on a campaign grounds and saw all the people?
Daniel Bäckrud (03:33):
Yeah, so the first campaign I was, and I’ve been on other mission trip before, but the first campaign was was in Pakistan. And I I had a warm up there and I felt that this is the thing I would do for the rest of my life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:49):
And then where was the campaign where you got to preach for the first time and then where did you go, where you did the whole campaign on your fourth one?
Daniel Bäckrud (04:00):
Yeah, so both of those was in India where the organization I’ve been serving has been, been serving in the northeast of India. And we have had lots of campaigns there and I have been also having many campaigns there afterwards. So, so yeah, it was in, it was in India.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:20):
And tell me where you have been going since then. What, what doors have God opened and what are some of the countries that you’ve really enjoyed visiting?
Daniel Bäckrud (04:31):
Yeah, so, so through the organization, I am serving as an evangelist in Go Out Mission and the network of Ace, I have been able to, to do campaigns in, in India, in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan, in not campaign, but missions in, in Thailand campaigns in Western Africa, Guinea and Togo, and also Madagascar. So there are quite, quite many countries that I have been traveling the past five years. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
You’ve been to a lot of countries. We’ve gone to many of those countries. I love Madagascar. We did five campaigns there in Madagascar over the years, and it’s such a beautiful country. All right. So recently I heard you share a testimony of a quite impactful thing that God did in your life. You were on a zoom call and someone began to speak in tongues and, and prophetically God spoke to you through this te tell me what happened.
Daniel Bäckrud (05:28):
Yeah, so we had this ACE (Association of Campaign Evangelists) conference online,last year, September. And,there was one of the evangelists who spoke in tongues. And as she opened her mouth, I started to shake and my sight became blurry and I started to cry and I started to, to uto, to sweat. And,I saw a vision in front of my eyes where there was a map of Indonesia. And you have to, to, to, to understand that I did not know anything about Indonesia before this. I could not describe the map. I didn’t know the names of the islands, and I didn’t know so many of the islands. I know the, the, the big one to the left and the, the big one to the right and the two in the middle. But I didn’t know anything but that. But I saw a red spot, God, God showed me a red spot in the sea between one of the biggest islands, two of the biggest islands.
Daniel Bäckrud (06:20):
And I went to the Google Maps searching for, for what is on this red spot. And I found out that there were two islands on this, this red spot that I did not know of before. And I felt God speaking to me, you must go here. And I went to, to Joshua Project and other databases over unreached people groups. And I found out that there are two groups that are considered unreached on those islands. So we reached out to one of our friends that are working in Indonesia, other parts of Indonesia, a woman called Susan Hoover, a wonderful woman of God who have done tremendously work. And you have been working with her as well?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:59):
Yeah. So Susan Hoover, a great woman of God from the nation of Canada. Yeah. She originally went to Indonesia as a missionary from Peter Youngin’s ministry. And God gave her a gift for languages. And so she very quickly learned how to speak Indonesian and now speaks it fluently with the accent of the people. And people are always surprised to see her. She’s as white as can be, but yet she speaks perfect Indonesian. And so she has a bible school in Madan, been doing many campaigns in different parts of Indonesia, and, and she’s a, a, a dear friend of my wife and, and our family. And so she’s doing great work there in Indonesia. So you knew that she was there working in Indonesia. You called her What happened?
Daniel Bäckrud (07:51):
Yeah, so we had a sue meeting with her. It was, this was during the pandemic, so, so the, the, the borders was close. The immigration policy of Indonesia was very strict, so we couldn’t travel there. It was impossible to get any visa. So we were, we, we were reaching out and planning this and said, as soon as the country opens up, we want to come. And she promised to, to provide interpreter for us in send one of her staff to, to interpret for me. And I was refreshing the, the immigration policy on the, the websites like every week since. And suddenly in in the spring this year, 2022 the, the, the, the country opened up for, for, for some countries in Sweden. What is included? Well, one of the first ones. So I booked the ticket one week after the, the country opened up, and a few months later I went there and yeah, Susan provided an interpreter that traveled a long way with me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:53):
And so you took your interpreter, you went out to these islands that are just dots on the map in the place where God gave you a vision, and you went and looked at some of the databases like Joshua Project that gives information about unreached and unengaged people, groups people groups that don’t have any church or any believers that are reproducing in their society. And it gave you some information about those islands and some of the people that were supposed to be there. And, and so you just went to investigate? Yeah,
Daniel Bäckrud (09:34):
Yeah. It was you know, investigating trip and we, we went there to do some research to, to finding some way to, to reach those people. And my first goal was to, to find those people groups that was in the database. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:49):
So what were the names in the database of the people groups
Daniel Bäckrud (09:53):
There, there to its Banca and it’s Beletu,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:55):
Okay. And so tell me that process. You’re, you’re there on the island and you’re looking for these unreached people groups. How did that go?
Daniel Bäckrud (10:03):
Yeah, so we wanted to, to like have a local foundation to, to put our feets on the ground. So we went with a motorbike,me and my interpreter, he was driving it and I was sitting on the back and we went, looked at Google Maps because we had no connections. So we went look at Google Maps and we find some churches and we went there, we knocked the door and we asked for the pastor and we talked to the pastor, interviewing them and, and asking, Do you know about these people? And, and,where do we find them?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:33):
Okay. And and what’d they say?
Daniel Bäckrud (10:36):
Yeah. So the problem was that we, we went from door to door speaking with 10 15 pastors, and no one ever heard about those groups.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:46):
Okay. So you’ve, you, the database says that there’s on reach people groups there, and you go and are looking for the banca people. Yeah. And people are saying, I don’t know where they are. Yeah. So, so then what happened? You, you, you said that you had like a recording of the language. Yeah,
Daniel Bäckrud (11:05):
Yeah. So we, I was staying in, in a home of Su Susan had a student that was originally from this area. So we were invited to sleep in the house of, of his grand, her grandparents. And they were, they were Muslims original from Malaysia. And we, we really blessed to, to, to stay in their home. And you know, as we, as we were traveling around asking for, for this group that was called Banca in the database, I, I had the recording in my phone that I got from, from Wcl, that is translating Bible and, and giving resources. And I played it because we, we never find the people groups. So I, I, I tried to play this and I asked, What language is this? And it turns out that that was Hacka, which is a Chinese language. And it turns out that all the pastors that we were met were from that tribe.
Daniel Bäckrud (12:04):
And then I asked, What, what about all these other people that are Muslims? What, what are they? And they said, they are the malai, they are from, from Malaysia, and they, they live total separate life from the Chinese. And it turns out that this Malai people, they have developed their own dialect of Malaysia, Malaysia language Malai. And it has, that language is called Banca. So the tribe that was in the database called Banca is locally called the Malai because they are originally from Malaysia. And so I’ve been traveling all over the island searching for a people group, and at the end of the day, it, it, it’s turns out that every night I came home eating dinner, sleeping in the bed, talking with people who was the people group banca.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:01):
Wow. So you, you finally found them. I did. You you went searching. Yeah. You’re on a treasure hunt. Yeah. And you found this people who God loves very much. And, and, and God led you there. God gave you a vision that that led you to this place. Yeah. And, and so that was just the beginning. You, you, you didn’t know anyone at first. You just had an interpreter go with you. You met some people and now you’re, you’re planning to go back and you, you’re actually putting together a plan that’s going to take several years to complete to, to actually reach these people. Yeah. And so it hasn’t happened yet, but you’re in process, so you’re about to go back. And can you kind of explain what you’re doing on, on the second trip and then what you hope will happen in the future?
Daniel Bäckrud (13:49):
Yeah. So at the first trip at the end of the week, we met with one pastor who is a very, very much a man of peace. He’s a very honorable man. He’s an ex-marine and he’s a pastor who has built up lots of churches among the Chinese tribe. And he’s a wonderful man of God who has done tremendously work the past 30 years. And we, we had a hard connection with him and we have been communicating with him both when I was there the last time, but also with, with phones and zooms meetings since then. So this time I’m invited to, to his church, have a couple of conferences to speak to both leaders and youths and their congregation. And you know, right now I’m building more relationship with him so that we find trust in each other to, to, you know, pull out a vision how to, how to reach those people because there are one, 1.5 million people unreached on those islands that have no access to the gospel. Right now, there are no Bible in the language. There are no churches, there are no pastors, there are no worship songs. There are nothing in their context. So it’s a lot of work that has to be done.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:10):
Indonesia has a unique situation because many of the Christians in Indonesia come from a Chinese background. And since they’re Chinese, they are good in business. And so when they come into the church, the, they give money to the church. The church is, is well off. But then you also have lots of groups that are Muslim and they tend to be poor. And so in many countries that you go to, the Christians are very poor, and then the, the, the other people are rich. But in Indonesia, it’s kind of flipped. The Christians are rich, but they don’t always know how to reach people. I think in talking to them every Indonesian Christian I’ve talked to wants to reach people, but sometimes it’s difficult to work cross culturally cuz even though they’re in the same country, they often speak the same language. They, they have a different culture. It’s Chinese versus Muslim, and there’s lots of differences in culture and, and that type of thing. And, and so part of reaching the Unre people is giving a vision to the churches that come from a different culture, how they can develop missionaries that will go from their culture into another culture. Yeah.
Daniel Bäckrud (16:37):
Yeah. Everything you see is, is absolutely correct. This is cross-cultural missionary we’re looking for inside the nation. And yeah, we, I i, if we do this again next day’s conference, maybe I have more, more answers because we are, we are in the process and we are in the beginning of the beginning of this journey in this province bunk be. So yeah, this is this is the challenge we have in ahead of us, but we believe in God’s grace, in God’s miracles and God’s favor. And we just pray that the Holy Spirit will lead people into the heart of a missionary Yeah. On those islands.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:18):
Well, I, I really admire your boldness in going, you don’t have a contact, you just have a, a vision from God, and it takes great faith to, to go to just start knocking on doors of churches that you find on Google until you find the the right man of peace. Who can you explain kind of what a man of peace is? What, what is that?
Daniel Bäckrud (17:44):
Yeah, that probably, there are many definitions, but to me, a man of peace is, you know, the local person who has access to both other churches and also the society and has keys to reach into different, both churches, but also among the, the people that we are about to reach and who has the heart for, for missions, who has the heart to reach people, who has the burden of souls in the heart and is also open to cooperate with, with, you know, the, the person we need to accomplish what God has put in our hearts that the matter. Peace.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:21):
Another thing I think you’re being really smart with is developing relationships, going in, starting to, to talk to people, develop relationships, asking a lot of questions. I think sometimes foreigners come and they feel like they have all the answers and they know this is how you reach people. Yeah. But you have to work with the people that are there, the in work within their culture and how they, they do things. And so, so you’re, you’re doing this step by step. This is not something you want to accomplish immediately. This is something that you want to make a commitment to for, for years to come. Yeah.
Daniel Bäckrud (19:01):
Yeah. You know, this, this job includes so many things. We are starting to, to train people during this upcoming week. I’m hoping that we can have a, a group that are committing to cross culture missionary and that we can train them for, for several months, and that we can send them to, to, to this tribes. And that we can follow up on that by doing evangelistic events or festivals or campaigns or crusade or whatever name you wanna put on it. But, but reaching people in, in masses in those, those villages that’s what we want to do long term and, and checking villages by villages to, to to really have an impact in this, in this people group.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:46):
Well, I really think that your story can inspire people who are listening, who are wondering, you know, where should I go? God, you know, maybe they have the desire to go, but they don’t know where to go. Well get a vision from God. Go find an island that needs Jesus and, and just go, You may not have context. You may not know what to do. Just go, you know, Jesus said in Mark 1615, Go into all the world Yeah. And preach the gospel. And so two thirds of God’s name is go and <laugh>. And so you have to be like God, and, and, and go. And if you’ll just go, then you’ll begin to see miracles happen. And I know that you will see miracles happen. I know that you will see people in this tribal group come to Jesus, You’ll see churches established. And, and so I think we should make an appointment to talk again in two or three years to share the testimony of how you can reach a whole island for Jesus
Daniel Bäckrud (20:45):
<Laugh>. That is wonderful. Thank you for your faith and your encouragement. Just to add something about to, to what you said of course we don’t need like a clear vision of a place to go, just to go. We don’t have to, to wait on the, the fire scripture on the wall. It Bible is very clear. Go into all the earth, lot of places included in that challenge,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:09):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So if you go somewhere on the earth, you are in God’s will He told you to go. You can expect him to go with you.
Daniel Bäckrud (21:16):
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I have been traveling as an evangelist for, for five years before I got this vision, having tremendous success in many places, seeing so many miracles and people say to God. And yeah. You know I, I never had anyone telling me what country to go to before that. I just went with wherever it was possible. And yeah. Suddenly I got this vision and I, I have to be faithful with that because not many people get that clear vision.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:49):
Amen. Well, let’s finish by saying a word of prayer. Yeah. For these people, obviously they’re on God’s heart. God gave you a vision, and, and so let’s just pray for them.
Daniel Bäckrud (22:01):
Yes. So, Heavenly Father, we just place this people group banca and the people group of Bella tomb before your heart. Thank you that you have created them. Thank you that you love them with your heart. Thank you that you are their father. And let me be the tool to realize, let them realize who their father is. Lord, thank you that you love them so much, and I pray that you will put your love for this people in my heart. Let me feel what you feel. Let me see what you see. And we just pray for those churches that exist among other groups. We just pray that you will send your fire, that you will send your, your, your strength and your power and your will and your, your, your, your eager to reach those people for these churches. Lord, we just pray that upon them. We thank you for all the work that has been done. We honor everything that has been been happening in the past, and we just thank you for all the tremendous work that those pastors has been doing. But we pray that you will give them visions further to reach new tribes, new places where your gospel has not been preached before. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:06):
Amen. Well, thank you, Daniel for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Daniel Bäckrud (23:09):
Thank you for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:11):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (24:29):
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.