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129. Freedom In The Church - Evangelism and Outreach · 4-Freedom Podcast

0:04
Welcome to the Four Freedom Podcast.
0:10
I found my freedom in you. I found a.
0:16
Joy, I can't lose. And thank God it's true.
0:21
You wrapped your arms around me, and heaven broke through From
0:26
the moment she found me, I found my freedom in you.
0:32
This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for
0:36
everyday Christians with everyday issues.
0:40
Now here are your hosts, James Seyfrik and Brett Martin.
0:49
Welcome back to the Four Freedom Podcast.
0:51
It's always a blessing to be able to come back on and record
0:54
and talk about what's going on in our lives and some as we're
0:58
in this series of in the church And Brett, we had a great
1:02
service this past week for us man.
1:04
We had four visiting families, two of them were first time
1:08
guests and one of the newlywed couple.
1:11
Don't know how they even found out about the church, but man,
1:13
it was a great time for them to be there and just be able to
1:16
make some of those connections. And so I hope you are doing
1:19
well. Are you still here or has the
1:21
Rapture happened? And am I looking at a hologram
1:24
or or what's going on here? I hope this isn't my glorified
1:28
body. I would, I would prefer my
1:31
glorified body, you know, to not be this one.
1:34
So I'm hoping the Rapture did not happen.
1:38
But yeah, obviously we're still here.
1:41
The the all the cities named Nineveh are still here.
1:45
And the Ark wasn't, you know, they didn't, the Ark didn't go
1:49
to heaven. It's still there.
1:50
And so, yeah, so the one, the one man in Rapture Indiana, we
1:54
don't know if he's still there. He may have been the only one
1:56
that was Rapture because he was the only person there in Rapture
2:00
Indiana. Exactly, exactly.
2:02
So so the the the eclipse came. The eclipse left.
2:07
And you know once again the date setters are wrong and never
2:12
never believe it. It's I think I'm not sure
2:16
somebody in the Bible warned us about date setters.
2:20
I you know I I can't remember who that was Right.
2:23
Right. Somebody famous that somebody
2:25
everybody knows. I just it's on the tip of my
2:27
tongue. Right.
2:30
Love it. Well you know it was a it was a
2:32
great time I got to watch. We were, you know, 80 or 90%
2:35
coverage out here. So my son had some glasses and
2:38
we looked at them. Brett, you were planning to go
2:40
look at it there in in Arkansas I think.
2:42
And I was 3 hours away. I was 3 hours away from it.
2:48
My plan was to drop Emily off at work, take the boys up to
2:52
Jonesboro, AR about 3 hours away, watch it for about four
2:56
minutes, turn around, come back home in enough time to pick my
3:00
wife up from work. It would have been a whole day,
3:03
but now I'm glad that I didn't do it because my sister-in-law
3:06
went to Arkansas. It took them four hours to get
3:11
where they were going and eight hours to get back because of the
3:14
traffic. There's there was a map on of
3:17
the country of all the Airbnb's that were sold out.
3:21
I saw that along the path of the eclipse and my sister-in-law
3:26
told me that the traffic was so incredibly bad, there's no way I
3:31
would have made it back to pick my wife up from work.
3:34
We had small group that night and dude, and then I'm like, OK,
3:37
we're gonna, we're we're gonna watch it here because we're
3:40
still 83 to 90% coverage. And then the clouds said, Nope,
3:48
so little cloud coverage there and so no, no eclipse for us.
3:54
So I'll have to wait. The next one that comes through
3:57
in 21 years is going to come right through Mississippi.
4:00
So I'll have to wait for that one.
4:02
You just walk outside the church, baby.
4:04
You can rent out some of the Sunday school rooms as an
4:06
Airbnb, make some money off of it.
4:07
And hey, we're good. Oh, man, very cool.
4:10
Love it. So yeah, we.
4:12
I got to watch a little bit of it.
4:13
To me. It happens.
4:16
You know, I, I know that's pretty cool to be able to see,
4:19
but I'm not going to drive a whole bunch of different ways to
4:22
go see it or or watch it or whatever.
4:24
But yeah, I was standing outside jumping a couple of times, maybe
4:28
hoping that in one of those jumps it was just going to, I
4:31
was just going to keep on going but never happened.
4:35
Hey, funny thing here, I'll share this.
4:36
I was on the phone or I was at football practice and we had
4:40
football practice that day and we're standing outside and John
4:43
calls me and I'm like, oh dude, I'm going.
4:45
So I let it ring like four or five times and I pick up and I
4:48
act like I was given like it was a voicemail.
4:50
Say, hey, this is the phone of Pastor James Seifert.
4:54
If you've reached this, it's because I have gone home to
4:57
glory and the rapture has happened.
5:00
He hung up on me like, I'm in the middle of saying this and
5:03
and he thought it was actually the voicemail.
5:05
I called him back. I was like, what are you doing?
5:06
I was like, I thought it wasn't the voicemail.
5:08
I was like, dude, I was leaving like a funny moment where I so
5:12
yeah, love it. Love.
5:14
It was great. So, well Brett, hey, we've got a
5:19
couple things. Our for freedompodcast.com, we
5:23
have went live with our Israel trip on there.
5:27
So if you've been looking and wondering where to find that
5:29
information, it's at for Freedom podcast dot com, the number for
5:33
freedompodcast.com. You can go and look at that.
5:36
Hopefully you'll want to go with us to the Holy Lands and we'll
5:41
be talking about that here in a while.
5:43
Me and John are actually going to be at a preaching conference
5:46
in Asheville. It was supposed to be me and
5:49
another guy and his wife is having surgery on the 25th, and
5:53
so the 24th and 25th will be in Asheville.
5:55
If you're in that area and you want to get up with us, shoot me
5:59
a message. And we'd love to hang out and
6:02
just have a good time there in Asheville.
6:05
And then just around the corner, Brett, we're about two months
6:08
away, 60 days away from the meet up.
6:12
We're calling it a meet up in Indiana.
6:14
Why don't you tell us about that?
6:16
Oh, yeah. We're going to the National
6:18
Southern Baptist Convention Conference in Indianapolis, IN
6:24
and we're looking forward to it. We've got us at Airbnb and we've
6:28
had several people contact us wanting to, wanting to meet up
6:33
and absolutely if you are going to the Southern Baptist
6:37
Convention this year in Indianapolis, let us know, hit
6:42
us up. We want to get together with
6:44
you. We've had a couple people
6:45
contact us and we're going to all get together and we we'd
6:49
love to do that. So we're we're definitely
6:51
looking forward to that. And then after the after that, I
6:57
think our next thing on our calendar is Catoosa, absolutely.
7:01
Hey, one of the things that I'm really excited about with the
7:04
Indianapolis SPC meeting, they do a Pastor's conference and
7:08
most conventions do a Pastor's conference beforehand and the
7:11
pastor's conference for the state National Convention.
7:13
Of course they got the big names, Jack Graham, Shane
7:16
Pruitt, some big guys that are coming in Bartholomew or
7:21
Herschel York, some guys, Jimmy Shroggins are coming in to
7:24
preach. But what I'm excited about is
7:26
the theme is pursuing your mission and just been able to
7:31
think about where we're at. And you know, one of the part
7:35
important parts of of being pastors is writing sermons and
7:38
praying with people, but also it's being faithful stewards of
7:42
what God's called us to do. And so these these men that are
7:46
going to come in are going to preach and teach us on, you
7:49
know, how to care well and how to be faithful pastors.
7:53
And so I'm looking forward to that as young pastor, my first
7:56
year being a senior pastor. And so it's been that's why I'm
8:00
going to this preaching conference, you know, where I'm
8:02
trying to hone some of these skills and even been chewing on
8:06
some of the things that Marcus said last week on our episode of
8:10
some some certificates. And just thinking about ways
8:13
that we can be effective in our leadership, effective in our
8:17
pastoring. And also here on the podcast,
8:19
just how we can care well for others that are going through
8:22
hurt and trauma and and pain. And so yeah, I'm excited about
8:26
that. And then Catoosa, man, it's
8:28
going to be great hanging out with JC and getting a shine the
8:31
bald head and hopefully rub it and and the genie will come out
8:34
and grant A wish from the RFP and we're literally looking
8:38
forward to that and hopefully you are as well and hopefully
8:41
you'll be joining us down there in Catoosa for the meet up in
8:45
November. And then we've got Israel coming
8:49
up next year in March, this the second week of March next year.
8:54
Most of it probably going to be spring break for a lot of people
8:57
and nine days in the Holy Land. Listen, we like we're just going
9:02
to kind of repeat this like a broken record, but we're excited
9:06
about it. We want everybody to go that
9:08
wants to go. It's safer now than it was when
9:12
we went. And so you know their tours on
9:15
the ground right now we've got friends that are going over
9:19
there this summer that are leading groups and so it's it's
9:23
just going to get safer as we get closer to next year to next
9:27
March. So if you have not signed up for
9:30
Israel yet, go to our website for freedompodcast.com and click
9:36
on the link and you'll be able to to go to our trip website,
9:41
check out our prices, check out our itinerary, where we're
9:45
going, what we're doing. We're doing stuff on this trip
9:48
that we have that we haven't done yet and some of the some of
9:51
the new things on our itinerary, I'm very, very excited about.
9:56
We've worked in some time for just bumming around and shopping
9:59
and things like that. And so we're definitely looking
10:02
forward to taking this trip once in a lifetime trip.
10:06
Your life will will never be the same.
10:08
You'll never pray the same again.
10:10
You'll never read your Bible the same again.
10:13
You will not regret investing in this trip.
10:17
Absolutely. Absolutely.
10:19
Man, I can't wait. And I'm so excited to even put
10:22
the information on the website this week.
10:24
Just being able to read through the itinerary again.
10:27
Just oh man, it was just a it was awesome for me.
10:31
Just was overwhelmed with emotions.
10:33
Seeing some of the sights again. Man, it was great.
10:36
What food are you looking forward to the most 'cause they
10:39
got Greek food over there. Two things, two things I cannot
10:43
stop thinking about the hummus that we had while we were there.
10:47
Not a hummus fan whatsoever. But there was just something.
10:51
I don't know if it was the magic of Israel if some some type of
10:54
holy water they put in it but the hummus was fantastic.
10:58
And then dude, I'm going to, I'm going to go deep dive in on the
11:01
the shawarmas again. Like I'm, I'm missing it.
11:04
I loved it every single time. And I wish I would have had
11:06
more. There's a couple times where I I
11:08
branched out and got the falafel and some of the other things
11:11
should have just stuck with the shawarma and just smacked on it
11:14
the whole time. And so man, I can't wait.
11:17
It's gonna be great. The chicken shawarma was great.
11:20
I'm a big falafel fan, so that was good.
11:23
We went to that one restaurant where I ordered steak, man.
11:26
It was good too. I didn't have that one thing
11:28
over there that that I didn't like.
11:31
And man, the breakfast buffets just go on for just an eternity.
11:37
They're so big now. There's no bacon, there's no
11:40
pork, nothing like that. But there's plenty of other
11:44
things that you know, to satisfy you.
11:47
So I'll give them a pass on the no bacon, but there's plenty of
11:52
other stuff there. So you're definitely going to
11:53
have a good time. Absolutely can't wait for it,
11:56
man. That's going to be great.
11:58
So this week and next week, we're going to be talking about
12:01
evangelism and outreach and what that looks like and the mode of
12:05
what that is and how we were trained and some ways that we've
12:09
learned since that and since leaving the IFB and what that
12:12
looks like, we've got a guy named Don Lomb coming on.
12:15
He is the Director of Outreach and Evangelism for the
12:19
Mississippi Baptist State Convention.
12:21
And so he's going to come on next week and and discuss some
12:24
some things that they're doing with the convention and outreach
12:27
and opportunities. And at Southern Baptist we give
12:30
in cooperation through Andy Armstrong and Lonnie Moon for
12:34
North America mission and and the International Mission Board
12:39
And those dollars go to support missionaries all over the world
12:43
here in the States and all over the world in mighty different
12:46
ways. And so we're really excited
12:49
about talking through that today and and sort of talking through
12:52
what we have been taught. So, Brett, I will.
12:55
I'll get the conversation started today.
12:58
As I was preparing and thinking through the episode, I was
13:02
thinking about my very first time being trained on outreach
13:08
evangelism, whatever you want to call it.
13:10
And so we had our men's soul winning every Thursday night in
13:15
our church. And so the men would show up,
13:17
there'd be 10 or 15 of them there, and they'd go out and
13:20
knock doors. And so I I showed up because
13:22
they advertised it and they talked about it every week.
13:24
And I'm like, well, I probably need to do this at some point.
13:27
So I was like 15 years old. I show up and we sort of had
13:32
some names of people who came we're going to go follow up and
13:35
then sort of knock that street they lived on.
13:38
And so the name we got, I can't remember.
13:42
I remember a couple of different guys I went with and I don't
13:45
remember which one it was, but I was with them.
13:47
And I'm talking and he goes to the door and we knock on the
13:50
door, You know, you've been there and they introduce
13:53
themselves. You know, we're so and so from
13:54
gospel at Baptist Church in Salisbury and we just want to
13:57
follow up from you guys coming. And so this was someone who
14:00
already came and was familiar with the church.
14:02
And so the conversation was really good.
14:05
Well, it was like an apartment complex.
14:06
And so we went to the next door, we knocked on the door and and
14:10
the guy led the conversation. I'm just watching.
14:11
I've never done this before. And so he's like, so do you have
14:15
any questions? I'm like, Nah, I'm sounds good.
14:18
He said, all right, you're going to do the next one.
14:20
I'm like, dude, what? Like you've done 2 Doors.
14:24
And so, like, I stumbled through.
14:26
I didn't know what I was doing. I'm trying to invite this guy to
14:29
church. I was nervous as I'll get out.
14:32
And so that was my introduction to door to door soul winning.
14:35
And so door to door soul winning, it's effective in a
14:38
way. And I did that all the way up
14:40
until Bible College and even after Bible College in our first
14:43
ministry, that's all we ever did, you know was was door to
14:46
door soul winning. And then there was this thing
14:49
called the Idea Day. Do you remember?
14:51
Have you ever heard of the Idea Day, Brett?
14:55
The Idea Day came out when I was in Idaho and that was basically
14:58
this really big event. It sort of spawned out of West
15:02
Coast Bible College and it was a group of guys, Josh Tice and
15:06
some other guys that said, hey, let's just get some guys in a
15:09
room and let's just talk about some things that we've done in
15:13
evangelism that have worked good, bad and different maybe
15:17
ideas that you've never thought of.
15:19
And so I'm like, OK, let's maybe this is sort of some ecumenical
15:22
thing, some crazy left wing thing.
15:24
And so I just sort of watched from a distance.
15:27
Well man, some of these ideas were coming out and they were
15:29
fantastic ideas, things that I'd never thought of because when
15:32
you get people in a room, I like how Brian Edwards said the other
15:35
day. We only ever drink out of our
15:38
barrel of water. And it's only until we get other
15:41
people there do we get to hear what other people's barrel of
15:44
water is, because we all think differently.
15:47
And so for the first time in this, you know, round table
15:50
gathering, and I'm sure it'd been done in other places, but
15:52
in the IFB had never been done before.
15:54
And so they began sharing some ideas.
15:56
Like, hey, we went to the DMV and in our area where this guy
16:03
was talking, the the DMV lines were hours long where people be
16:07
waiting outside, it'd be cold or whatever.
16:09
And So what we decided to do was just show up with some hot
16:12
chocolate and just give everyone in line hot chocolate and
16:15
coffee. And it was cold.
16:17
And it was a great way to encourage them.
16:19
And and while they're there, hey, do you guys go to church
16:21
anywhere? You know, we're not there to,
16:24
you know, make them go to church, but we're getting them a
16:26
cup of coffee. And so they're they're sort of
16:27
stuck in line. And so we had an opportunity
16:29
just to talk to people. Maybe it was just simple ways of
16:33
just serving and helping and loving people in our area.
16:36
And I began to just think, man, this is a crazy different way
16:40
than I'd ever thought. And so this is sort of what
16:44
spurred on to me to think outside the box in evangelism.
16:48
And so Brett, why don't you share your.
16:50
And then I we're going to go back and share how we were
16:52
taught in college because those are some fun stories as well.
16:55
So share how you sort of got started in the evangelism and
16:58
and your your upbringing of church.
17:01
There was one reason and one reason only when I was a
17:05
teenager that I wanted to go to midweek soul winning, and that
17:12
was because of Taco Bell, because they took the teenagers
17:17
to Taco Bell on the What we do is we load up on the church bus
17:21
and they would, we split up into groups and they'd drop us off in
17:27
a neighborhood and we'd canvas the neighborhoods cold knock
17:30
doors. They weren't, you know, visitors
17:32
or contacts. We just, you guys, you knocked
17:35
this street, you guys you knocked this street and then
17:39
we'll come pick your drive through and come pick y'all up
17:42
when you're done and just knocking on doors.
17:46
And then afterwards we go to Taco Bell and then you know that
17:49
you can socialize before Wednesday evening church.
17:52
And then we did that for a couple years and then we got
17:55
tired of Taco Bell and switched to Dick to Dairy Queen.
17:58
And so that that was, that was the, that was the, you know, the
18:02
catalyst that wanted me to go soul winning because I wanted to
18:05
socialize with everybody. But it worked.
18:08
And I got out there and you know what?
18:10
And you know, I was lucky. I got to go a couple of weeks
18:13
and watch before they threw me out into the waters.
18:18
And I'm a natural introvert and so it's really hard for me to
18:23
talk to people. And so I really had to push
18:26
myself out of my shell to do it. But, you know, this time I'd
18:30
already surrendered to preach. And so I was like, well, I'm
18:32
going to have to do it. And so we started knocking doors
18:34
and passing out tracks and things like that.
18:37
And I can remember one of the first door apartments that I
18:42
knocked on. And I remember this guy comes
18:45
the door. And I asked him the questions,
18:48
like, if you died today, where would you go?
18:51
And he said, man, if I die today, I'm going to Brookhaven,
18:53
Ms. And man, that really caught me off guard.
18:57
I was like but what he was saying was, you know, that's
19:01
where he was going to get buried and then they just going to put
19:03
him in the ground. I've had good experiences.
19:06
I've had, you know, you know, nice people, but I've had short
19:10
tempered people. I've had people cuss me, I've
19:13
had people slam the door in my face and you know all that
19:16
stuff. Then we go to Bible college and
19:18
was trained there and kind of did the same thing and and on
19:22
into the ministry. And then you know, all all we
19:25
knew about evangelism was door knocking, door knocking, door
19:29
knocking, door door knocking. Like that is the only way to do
19:32
it. And you know, and so that's what
19:36
that's what we were taught to do.
19:37
And that's what I did. And so then I left the church
19:40
where I was at. I went to go pastor my own
19:42
church and you know, I'm still door knocking and doing that.
19:45
But then I got to thinking, you know, there's this can't be the
19:49
only way. And you know, there's got to be
19:52
other ways, other avenues. I I didn't.
19:55
I was so out of touch with people I didn't know.
19:58
I was only trained by IFB churches and IFB colleges.
20:03
So I didn't know anything else. And so, man, I just went to
20:06
YouTube, university and I started, you know, you know,
20:10
getting, you know, church outreach ideas, typing it up,
20:13
trying to find videos. And I found a a guy on the
20:17
Internet. His name is Chris Abbott.
20:19
On YouTube and he's got some good videos.
20:23
A lot of them are repetitive. They kind of repeat the same
20:26
thing. But he's all for social media,
20:28
media and Facebook ads. And man, we we started to try
20:32
some new stuff. One of the things that I would
20:35
do that I got from him is that I would put on this Facebook ad.
20:40
I'd record a video of, you know, hey, this is Pastor Brett and I
20:45
want to pray for you today. And so if you just shoot us a
20:49
message, tell me what you want me to pray for and I'll pray for
20:52
you. And So what they would do is
20:54
they would send me the message. Hey, my mom's having surgery.
20:58
I'm going through a tough time. Could you pray for me?
21:02
So there's a a messenger, there's a little feature where
21:06
you can record like a 62nd clip of you talking.
21:11
So what I do is I record my voice, say, hey, this is Pastor
21:15
Brett. Well, let me pray for you, and I
21:17
pray for their need. Make sure it was in the 60
21:20
seconds. And at the end of the video I
21:22
said, listen, if I can ever do anything for you, let me know.
21:26
We're having church this Sunday at 11:00 AM Can you make it?
21:29
And then I'd send it to them. And man, I did that for a while,
21:32
had a lot of good responses from that.
21:34
A lot of people contact me. A lot of people would end up
21:38
wanting to call me, want me to come visit them.
21:41
So prayer ads was another idea that I come up with.
21:44
Another idea that I kind of that Chris kind of let me know about
21:50
was fill the fridge. And So what I did is I went to
21:55
we had an elementary school right across the street from the
21:58
church. We have the middle school and
22:01
high school a half a mile down the road from our church.
22:04
So I had three schools right there around the church.
22:07
So I went to each principal and I said, hey, once a month, can
22:10
we come in your school and just kind of fill the fridge into the
22:16
teachers lounge? And they said, yeah, go ahead.
22:19
And so I go to Walmart and spend about 150 bucks.
22:23
We're talking 50 bucks to school.
22:26
I'd buy drinks and Cokes and waters and oatmeal cream pies
22:30
and little Debbie's and and I'd fill my car up once a month and
22:34
I'd go to the teachers lounge and I'd get my I bought me a
22:38
little Dolly and I'd bring the drinks and snacks into the
22:41
teachers lounge. I got.
22:42
I bought magnets with the church information on them.
22:46
And every time I left I'd put a letter on the refrigerator
22:50
telling the teachers how much I appreciate with what we did, how
22:54
we're praying for them, things like that.
22:56
And I did that all three schools for several months and man, we
23:00
had a lot. We had so many teachers and
23:04
their families come through and visit our church.
23:07
We had, you know, like five families come through and visit
23:11
from that. We had three families of
23:14
teachers join our church and start coming faithfully, you
23:18
know, once we did that. And so we just saw a lot of
23:21
good, lot of good things from that.
23:23
And that was kind of the thing that showed me, OK, door
23:26
knocking. It's something, yes, it is part
23:28
of it, but it's definitely not all of it.
23:31
It's not even most of it. There are other things we can do
23:35
to reach out, to reach people where they're at, to to
23:38
influence them into a gospel conversation.
23:42
There's other things we can do. And that's what really kind of
23:45
opened my eyes to, OK, door knocking.
23:48
Isn't the end all be all of what evangelism is?
23:53
Yeah. And man, that's some great
23:55
ideas. I hope if there's pastors out
23:57
there listening, you'd write them those ideas down that Brett
23:59
just shared because that was great.
24:02
So, Brett, let's back up a little bit because when we were
24:05
in college, I was in. When I was in high school, we
24:08
were going out. No one ever formally taught me,
24:11
OK, if someone wants to accept Jesus, how do we talk to them?
24:15
I just literally was just fumbling through this, trying to
24:18
figure it out. So when I got to Bible college,
24:21
it's the first time I was actually they they showed me how
24:25
to lead someone in the sinner's prayer.
24:29
Now I don't like the sinner's prayer in this sense because I
24:34
believe there's a lot of manipulation that's done.
24:38
And so I think that it's more about you know how what does
24:42
what does Paul say in the New Testament in Romans he says that
24:45
I think it's Romans may been in one of the other.
24:50
I can't remember exactly where, maybe even Corinthians, where he
24:52
says that I planted the seed, Apollo's watered the seed, and
24:58
God gave the increase. Our command is just simply to go
25:02
out and to share the word and to share the good news of Jesus
25:05
with others and allow God to give the increase, whether it be
25:08
in that moment or another time, and to call for people to have
25:11
to have repentance of their heart.
25:13
And so we were, we were taught Operation Go, and Operation Go
25:17
was taught by a guy named David Wood.
25:19
And David Wood would lead through this.
25:21
You know you you got to start the conversation out where you
25:23
you walk up and you see him. It's kind of Mustang out there.
25:26
You know you automatically just start talking about hot rods and
25:29
cars you know and and some of those things are great if you're
25:32
if you're trying to blind cold call a conversation you do want
25:36
to have some type of something that you're going to talk with
25:39
and so that's that's a good good, good word there.
25:42
And then he began to go through, you know, you you lead them into
25:45
the sinners the the the plan of salvation and and the Romans
25:49
road and and so for me it was all new.
25:52
And then he went into the manipulation tactic of all
25:55
tactic and you can sort of share what you were taught as well.
25:58
But it was if the person wants to receive Jesus, you reach out
26:02
and you put your hand on their shoulder with your left hand and
26:06
you keep your right hand open. And so you begin to pray.
26:09
And in that prayer you say you sort of squeeze the shoulder a
26:13
little bit and you begin to say now bread, if if you want to
26:16
accept Jesus in this moment, reach out and grab my right
26:20
hand. And in that moment there they
26:23
they reach out to this manipulation and they grab your
26:26
hand And you say, OK now repeat after me And you lead them
26:29
through this prayer and now all of a sudden they've accepted
26:32
Jesus and you write that name down and you, you turn that
26:35
paper in that so and so accepted Jesus and the the church is
26:39
going to follow up with them. And that's the the evangelism
26:43
mode that that I was taught and I used up until I mean 8-9 years
26:49
ago when I left the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement.
26:51
So Brett, what were you taught in Howes Anderson from your time
26:57
there and maybe even at was it Maranatha you went to?
27:03
Well, I'll tell you, at growing up as a teenager, our pastor
27:08
did, you know, teach us how to lead people to Christ.
27:10
He, you know, we memorized the Romans Rd., the track that we
27:15
had at our church. I memorized every word of it.
27:19
I memorized all the Roman Rd. verses and you know, was taught
27:23
to do it. But really it really, you know,
27:27
got a little more in depth when I did get to House Anderson and
27:30
my personal evangelism teacher was a man by the name of Laurie
27:35
Smith. Hello, this is Laurie.
27:38
That's how we used to mock him. And but he's the guy.
27:42
There's a clip that that bad sermons, you know, put up of a
27:47
guy standing at First Baptist Church and he he he's, you know,
27:53
calling out a a house and Anderson college student who's
27:57
you know talking and just mocking him and you know all
28:01
this stuff. I can't even remember half of
28:02
what he said. But that's Larry Smith and he
28:06
would scream at us in in class. You know, these guys are
28:10
working. They're working third shift
28:13
jobs. They're, you know, they're
28:14
working, you know, 50 hours a week and coming in at 2:00 in
28:18
the morning, getting up at 6:00 to go to class.
28:21
And you know, he would tell guys he'll stand up in the back,
28:24
don't go to sleep. And if somebody closed their
28:26
eyes or dozed off, he would just start screaming his, his big
28:30
thing was don't make a statement, ask the question.
28:35
So you couldn't even set up a premise to ask a question.
28:39
I remember this one class. He made this girl cry because
28:43
she's trying to set up the premise in order to ask the
28:45
question. But he wouldn't let her do that.
28:48
And so he was real particular and you know, he just had a
28:52
method. And this is how you do it.
28:55
You asked, you know, just like you said, you you go up to
28:58
somebody, you find something to compliment.
29:01
If they have, you know, an LSU mailbox, talk to them about LSU,
29:06
find something to connect with them.
29:08
And then always he was the big thing.
29:10
I'm always, always, always ask the question, if you died today,
29:14
are you 100% sure you'd go to heaven or would you have some
29:17
doubt about it And you know, trying to always manipulate them
29:23
and just, you know, into into us giving them the plan of
29:29
salvation. Now today for me, I rely on the
29:33
Holy Spirit. If I'm not feeling the
29:36
situation, if I feel that, you know, they're in a hurry, or if
29:40
I feel that man, this just isn't the right time, we can do this
29:44
another time. You know, I'm going to listen to
29:46
the Holy Spirit when I'm in the situation when his big thing was
29:49
always, always, always give him the plan of salvation.
29:54
And it was kind of like the same as you.
29:56
He told us, you know, you, you put your Bible out or your New
30:01
Testament out and you say, hey, if you want to accept Christ as
30:05
your savior, put your hand on my Bible.
30:08
And then as soon as they put their hand on the Bible, you
30:10
say, repeat after me. And then my problem with this is
30:13
we would go, you know, we would study like that at House
30:16
Anderson, and then we would on the weekends go out on the bus
30:20
route and we would lead these people to the Lord on the
30:24
street. And then we'd never see them
30:26
again. I mean, I can't tell you how
30:27
many times we're trying to make numbers because, you know, we've
30:31
got to witness to so many people a week and we go up and we,
30:36
we're trying to pull those numbers and then they turn
30:38
around. Then you never see them anymore.
30:41
Discipleship just was not a thing.
30:43
It was all about the ABC 123 pray after me.
30:49
And I remember we would have our programs and we would go to
30:53
Kaminski Park outside where the White Sox play.
30:56
And that was my bus route. I was the bus captain for the
30:59
White Sox and so and we would St. preach after ball games and
31:04
we would just stand up there and we were counting every single
31:09
person that walked by and heard the speakers.
31:13
So every person that hurt us, we were counting and turning those
31:19
numbers in because that's just just just how we did it.
31:22
And so, you know that's kind of a how I was taught in evangelism
31:27
and Howes Anderson. Now, Brad, I always heard
31:30
stories that up at house they would put like a horse feeding
31:34
through or a portable baptism in the back of a truck or even fill
31:41
the bed of a truck up and drive down the streets of Hammond and
31:44
do St. Baptisms to get the baptism
31:47
numbers up. Did was that ever true?
31:49
Did that ever happened while you were there or is is that just
31:51
something that people said? I never saw that, but I I would
31:56
not put it past them. They would do some sketchy
32:00
things. I remember that there was this
32:03
one, they're trying to get numbers up and there was this
32:06
one division leader that said, OK, if you have a high
32:11
attendance on your bus, you're going to win KFC for your bus
32:15
route. And so this one bus captain, he
32:18
did everything he could. He filled his bus up and then
32:22
the division leader said OK, you won.
32:24
And so he gave him like a three piece dinner for him to like
32:29
give out to one family on his bus after they had you know,
32:34
promoted. He had promoted KFC for the
32:36
whole bus route. That's one of the reasons why I
32:38
had so many people on there. And so he ended up having you
32:41
know he wasn't just about to do that.
32:43
The captain had to you know buy buy meals out of his own pocket
32:47
for that. But you know they would do some
32:49
sketchy stuff. I wouldn't on the wouldn't put
32:51
it past them on on the on the portable baptism, but I never
32:56
saw it. But I wouldn't put it past them.
32:59
Yeah. Wow.
33:00
Well, as we move into sort of the second-half of what we're
33:04
doing now how how are we evangelizing people around us?
33:07
Me and you both are in a very rural locations as pastors, many
33:13
farms around me. There's not a lot of
33:15
subdivisions. Actually, I don't think there's
33:18
any subdivisions in the area of Klingman.
33:21
Where I'm at Ronda, there may be one or two, I'm not sure.
33:24
I haven't explored enough to know, but I haven't seen one
33:27
yet. And so where inner city, church
33:30
ministry, there's a little bit of things you can do different.
33:32
But where we're at context is, is everything.
33:36
And one of the things I really like that Michael Knowles says
33:39
often is find your your square, your your your corner square.
33:48
Where in the days of Paul the corner square was the the place
33:53
where people gathered on a daily basis, the Acapolicus or the
33:59
hypodrome or or these arenas where people would come and they
34:02
would hear people talk. That was the the common square.
34:07
Nowadays, there is not a big common square out in public.
34:11
To go out in the corner of Clingman and I would start
34:13
preaching, no one would hear me. It would just be cars.
34:17
Now, in the context of New York City, maybe there would be
34:19
people walking and maybe I would catch someone's attention and
34:22
they would come and they would listen.
34:24
Or in in Chicago at the White Sox, you know, those are
34:27
appealing places where people are giving a lot of foot
34:29
traffic. And so as we think through our
34:32
context of where we're at and what we do, I don't want any of
34:35
us to say here that this is the only way to do things because
34:39
there are many different ways to evangelize an outreach.
34:41
And ultimately, all of that needs to lead to what's called
34:44
discipleship, where you were sitting down one on 1/2 on one
34:49
and you are opening scripture and you're disciple in this new
34:52
believer in Christ. This is the the goal of of
34:56
making disciples and disciples. Making disciples is reaching and
35:00
teaching others about the gospel.
35:02
That's what Jesus commanded us to do, go into the world, reach
35:06
and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I've
35:10
commanded you to do. When have we?
35:12
Why have we gotten away from this teaching side of it?
35:16
And so one of the couple things that I'll sort of share, one
35:20
really cool example, Brett, I heard this this week.
35:23
Yesterday I had lunch with a pastor who's who's now the
35:26
director here at the North Carolina Baptist Children's Home
35:31
and he said he had a friend that went to Montana.
35:33
And I just thought this was a fantastic story.
35:35
So I wanted to share it because I want us to understand that
35:38
evangelism outreach looks different in all locations.
35:42
He, he went to Montana and was going to plant a church up there
35:45
in a rural, you know, very, very rural farming land of Montana,
35:50
100,000 acre farms, you know, massive farms bigger than what
35:53
we're used to. And so he began to get some
35:57
advice from the North American Mission board of hey, how do I
35:59
plant this? And at the time, this was 20
36:02
years ago, they had a program called 2 + 2.
36:05
And what it basically was was find two things that you can
36:08
begin to help and and reach and and make you sort of in the area
36:15
in the know and then find and begin to build those
36:19
relationships. And So what he began to do was
36:22
he found a local cafe. And this local cafe is where all
36:25
the farmers met almost every day.
36:28
And they had lunch. And they're same here where I'm
36:31
at. There's about five or six of
36:32
these all around my county. And he said every Wednesday he
36:37
went and sat at this cafe every single Wednesday and had lunch.
36:42
And after the course of a couple of months, people begin to
36:44
realize, OK, this guy's here, who is he?
36:46
They ask questions, told him he was starting a church, and they
36:49
begin to even refer to him as the pastor, the new pastor in
36:52
town. And so he did not have a church
36:55
yet. He had not actually started to
36:57
plant church or anything, but he just wanted to be in the
37:00
community and know the community well.
37:02
As he was in these meetings, he found out about the Volunteer
37:04
Fire Department that was in the area.
37:06
They had two meetings a month, One was for the leadership and
37:09
one was for the volunteers. And the volunteers were open to
37:12
anyone in the community that could come and find out
37:14
information about the Volunteer Fire Department.
37:16
So in that second meeting, he began to, with his wife make
37:20
cookies and brownies and cupcakes.
37:23
And they would show up to that meeting once a month, drop off
37:25
the cupcakes or cookies and say, hey, I'm pastor so and so wanted
37:28
to give you guys some, some, some treats and I appreciate all
37:32
you guys are doing. And he did that for a couple
37:34
months. Well, then they began to ask
37:36
him, hey, do you want to become a volunteer firefighter?
37:38
Hey, do you want to come to these meetings and sit in on
37:41
them and get some of your input? And so now all of a sudden he
37:43
became a volunteer firefighter. He's having these meetings at
37:46
the at the local diner and and so he began to have two working
37:50
relationships still had yet to plant the church still had yet
37:54
to actually had one service. But he's making these
37:56
relationships. Well then Brett this was the
37:59
cool part of the story. He began to figure out, OK we're
38:02
let's start trying to think about how we're going to plant a
38:04
church. And so he found the local
38:05
nursing home and he said, hey, do you guys have someone that
38:08
comes in on a Sunday morning and and does a message for your
38:11
residents and they said no we'd love to have that.
38:13
He said, can I come in and host a service for your residence,
38:17
but also open that up to anyone from the outside that wants to
38:20
come in? And they said sure, let's do it.
38:22
So he used the nursing home facility as his plant for start
38:27
his church. And so he had several members
38:30
from the nursing home come and was sitting there and then
38:32
people from the outside. These connections he made at the
38:35
cafe and at the Volunteer Fire Department, they started coming
38:38
and he launched the church out of the nursing home.
38:42
And now the day this church is going to have a building and
38:44
they've got about 100 and 5200 people in a really small town
38:47
right outside of Bozeman, Mt. All because of just taking some
38:52
really practical advice and just building relationships, getting
38:55
to know people, not necessarily beating things up, but just
39:00
being where they're at and showing up where they're at.
39:04
And I just, I love that so much because so often that would not
39:08
have been the method that would have been taught to us.
39:11
It would have been go and knock 1000 doors every day and nothing
39:14
wrong with that if you want to do that.
39:16
But 1000 doors in a rural community, it's going to take
39:18
you a really, really long time to do.
39:21
And so it's finding ways to find where people are at, doing where
39:25
they're at and sharing the gospel with them and being a
39:27
good positive influence in the community.
39:30
That's an unbelievable. That's an unbelievable story
39:33
because I I've never heard anything like that before and
39:37
it's so smart to use the nursing home and start your church with
39:42
no overhead. And I just that when you told me
39:46
that story, I just could not believe that that's so great.
39:50
It's such a good idea too. One of the things that I I
39:54
forgot to mention. But you were talking about
39:57
volunteer firemen and it made me think of it.
39:59
I tried this Fill a fridge with fire houses too.
40:04
And I went into the main Firehouse and I said, hey, you
40:07
know, I'd like to fill your fridge.
40:09
And the Fire Chief said, yeah. And then I said, you know what,
40:12
I'd also like to come up and and pray for the fireman one day.
40:15
When is a good time to do that? And it just so happened.
40:19
He said, you know what, Next Friday we're having training and
40:24
we're going to have all the firemen at this from from the
40:28
whole parish at this Firehouse next Friday.
40:32
You can come in and pray for them then.
40:34
And so then I was like, man, that's so cool.
40:38
And then I had double booked. There was something going, I
40:41
can't remember what it was now, but I had double booked and
40:45
there was no way that I could be at that meeting.
40:47
And so I asked one of my deacons to go, who just happened to be a
40:52
retired Fire Chief. And so he was able to go in
40:56
there and relate to them and talk to them and make them laugh
41:01
and represent our church and pray for them.
41:04
And it was just a good way to get out and get in our
41:08
community. But that's an awesome story
41:11
about that guy planting the church.
41:13
And one of the things we're doing in our church this year is
41:17
we want to do missions on several different levels,
41:20
though. The book of Acts is to go to
41:22
Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the
41:25
earth. And for us, the uttermost part
41:29
of the Earth is, you know, that's out of the country
41:31
missions, that's overseas missions, and then Judea,
41:35
Samaria, that's our state, that's the country we we live
41:37
in. But the greatest mission field
41:40
we have as a church is right outside the door.
41:44
It's right out the front door of the church.
41:46
So we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to reach our
41:50
Jerusalem? You know, this this past Sunday,
41:54
not this past Sunday. A couple weeks ago we had Palm
41:56
Sunday. So of course you got to preach
41:58
on Jesus on the donkey on Palm Sunday.
42:01
And I preached about how, you know, Jesus looked at Jerusalem
42:05
and he wept because, you know, he did not.
42:08
They didn't recognize him. And at the end of the message I
42:12
asked the question, how often do we weep over our county?
42:16
How much do we weep over the lost people in the cities that
42:21
we live and where we live? Our city is divided up in
42:25
communities. And you've got you've, you know,
42:28
you've got Barnes and Renfro and Remus and Lena and Thomastown.
42:32
These are all the different communities around us.
42:35
How often do we weep for those lost, you know, without God
42:41
there? And I think one of the things
42:43
you have to do in evangelism when you're trying to evangelize
42:48
your Jerusalem is you have to decide what are the needs of the
42:53
community that you live in. Just just just think through it.
42:58
For us, We, you know, outside of our doors is a bunch of farmers.
43:03
We've got farmers all around us. You know, we've got chicken
43:06
farmers. And you know, so those, those
43:09
are, these are middle class farming communities.
43:13
They've got kids that go to school.
43:15
They're into athletics, you know, they they've got football
43:18
players and they've got signs in their yards, but you know that
43:23
have their child's football number on it.
43:25
And so, you know, maybe there's an Ave. you can, you know, some
43:28
kind of sports banquet or or something like that.
43:32
Think about, you know, the youth in the area.
43:35
Are there any youth programs that you can start at your
43:38
church? Just know the community where
43:41
you're at. We've got a lot of homeschoolers
43:44
in our area with a homeschool group.
43:47
The bit beneficial to reach people.
43:50
We've got kids with small, you know, we've got families with
43:54
smaller children who just can't sit in a church service and
43:58
wrestle with their kid the whole time.
44:00
And so may be advantageous to start a, you know, a children's
44:06
church or something like that. You know, where, you know, the
44:09
the mom and dad can sit in church and listen to the
44:11
messages and the kid can go next door to the children's church.
44:14
And but that's all outreach, that's all evangelism to me, you
44:18
know. Well, I think there's two areas.
44:21
I'm rambling a little bit, but there's two areas we need to
44:24
decide on, and that is we need to know the difference between
44:27
our mission and ministry. Our mission is that's
44:32
evangelism. That is sharing the gospel.
44:36
OK? Ministry is like building
44:38
something. Building a ramp for an elderly
44:41
person in a wheelchair, painting a house, That's ministry.
44:46
Now if you're painting a house and you're beside somebody and
44:51
you're able to start a gospel conversation and and share the
44:54
gospel with them, that that's considered a mission.
44:58
But just decide you know where to do these two things, but
45:01
don't confuse them. Know the difference between
45:04
ministry and missions. And I think a good way to do
45:07
that is to really understand the needs of the community that you
45:12
live in. And then out of those needs, you
45:16
can discuss ideas on how to reach that community.
45:22
Love it. I think it's great.
45:24
And it's so important that we do that.
45:26
We have those brainstorming meetings where we can figure out
45:29
how we can reach and help our community.
45:32
You know, I've sat down with several of our principals since
45:34
I've been here and just talked to him and say, OK, what do you
45:37
guys need? What are some opportunities for
45:38
me to be able to come in and partner with the school, help
45:42
the school out and be a part of some of those great things that
45:46
one of the things that before I even got here that was
45:49
established a couple years ago was the local high school.
45:52
If there's a bomb threat or some type of, you know, a nuclear
45:57
reaction or some type of power outage, our church is the
46:03
designated response site. So they will bus all the kids to
46:07
our church because we've got a aging stage of classrooms,
46:10
there's cameras all over the property, there's bathrooms and
46:13
there's a loop around our church for the graveyard so parents can
46:17
have a pick up line. And so if something were to
46:19
happen a a school shooting or something, they would take all
46:22
of our kids to our church and they tell every parent that
46:25
comes in, hey, we've partnered with this church and this is how
46:28
we're going to be able to be an influence.
46:30
So it's it's little ways that we can just partner and be a part
46:33
of our community. You know, the church should be
46:36
an effective part of the community.
46:38
It should not be something outside the community.
46:41
It should be in it and with it and helping that community out
46:44
in mighty different ways. And so the people in our
46:47
community should be able to know that that church is there for us
46:51
to be able to be a blessing to us.
46:53
And one day when there's a when there's a need, you're going to
46:56
be there and you set that up and you prepared for those needs to
46:59
come in. And so I think it's important
47:02
that that we do that and and we don't we have to understand that
47:05
there's not just one-size-fits-all.
47:08
It's understanding the context of where you're at and and just
47:10
figuring out how can you reach the people that you have been
47:14
placed in and be effective in that.
47:18
And so things some great things and looking forward to hearing
47:21
what what Don has to tell us about what's going on in the
47:23
Mississippi State convention and some ideas there that we've got
47:28
in our next interview. Brett, any last thoughts just?
47:32
Like. You said, you know, just
47:33
brainstorm on some ideas. We one of the things we did at
47:38
our church is we started an outreach team and our outreach
47:42
team, our first meeting we just had last month and it was just a
47:47
brainstorming session. What can we do?
47:50
Listen, door knocking is a part of it.
47:53
You you can't get away from it. You know you're going to have to
47:56
go out and put door hangers on doors.
48:00
You know you're going to have to do that.
48:02
When it comes like 2, two big things, it's like Easter and
48:06
tracker tree. Those are kind of the biggest
48:09
draws for your church and you're going to have to get out there
48:13
and and put some door hangers on some doors.
48:15
But that's not the end all be all.
48:18
I know for our Baptist convention, you can contact it
48:24
and they'll give you a demographic of the a survey, a
48:27
demographic of the of where your church is in your area and just,
48:32
you know, to help you just kind of think through some ideas.
48:35
Think about the signage on your church.
48:38
Does your signage need to be updated?
48:41
Are the kids and athletics? Can you sponsor a ball
48:44
tournament? You know can you do a raffle or
48:47
whatnot, which in the IFB raffles are, you know, that's
48:51
gambling. You stay away from that wicked.
48:54
But there's nothing wrong with it And so, you know, do
48:57
something like that 4th of July is a big draw for your church.
49:01
Invest in some fireworks that you know, get people to come
49:06
have like a first responder type you know type meeting and just
49:11
just there's so many things that you can do back to school.
49:14
Bash, one of the things we're doing at the end of this month
49:17
is we started, we started a contemporary band at our church.
49:24
And so we're having a night, a free concert at our church, a
49:27
night of worship. And so just to get people in the
49:31
community to come in. So, you know, door knocking,
49:35
it's a part of it, but it's not all of it.
49:37
There are other things that you can do.
49:39
And so just think about it and pray about it and, you know, get
49:43
with some other people. You don't have to come up with
49:45
this all on your own. Get with another group of fellow
49:48
church members and brainstorm. I think the idea day was a great
49:53
thing. A lot of great things spawned
49:55
out of that. And so, you know, evangelism is
49:58
something that we're called to do.
50:00
We're called to spread the gospel.
50:02
We're called to make disciples who then go out and make
50:06
disciples. And that's what this thing is
50:08
all about. An evangelism is something that
50:10
the church is commissioned with. And it's something that we can
50:13
do. Absolutely love it and excited
50:17
about this talk and I hope it helps in some way.
50:19
Excited about Don coming on in a couple of next week.
50:22
And so until next time, Brett to God, not the pastor, be the
50:27
glory. Found my new.
50:29
Name found that good grace. Found that healing.
50:34
And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning.
50:38
That has no ending. Found that second chance.
50:39
Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness.
50:41
Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since I
50:44
found my freedom. Thanks for listening to the For
51:01
Freedom podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do
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