Evangelism Boot Camp

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

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Before walking into a coffee shop, what happens? Truth talk. The evangelist has written a book called Evangelism Boot Camp.

Jesse Connors, you're fired up about this. You want everyone in the world to know about this. Because so many Christians are not sharing their faith. We have the greatest news, the greatest message about the greatest Savior to transform our lives, yet why aren't we telling people? Tell everyone, our special guest here, what got you going on this evangelism and telling your Jesus story.

Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for being here with us. You're not in our circle, but you are in our hearts. So we want you to know that God has a plan for everyone. You can't fulfill the Great Commission unless you take the Great Commission seriously in your own life. I mean, everyone has a purpose to fulfill the Great Commission in their life, and it looks different. Like we have mechanics, we have college students, we have entrepreneurs, we have radio hosts, and we are all different in many ways, but we're all part of the same body. And so there are some generalities that we can all use to help let us go off and share our faith the way that God wants us to in any situation.

Like if you have literally five seconds, if you have ten minutes or an hour, what I'm about to explain to you is applicable. And you can find a lot of this on evangelismbootcamp.org. This is a book that's been forwarded by Josh McDowell. He's a great author and writer for the Christian world, and we're honored to have him say that this is the best, most comprehensive and fun worldview study that you can ever imagine. And we just highly recommend you going to evangelismbootcamp.org. So what we were just talking about was how to share your faith to people like just very quickly and not overwhelm them. And one of the basic elements that we teach in evangelismbootcamp is that you have to really level with them. The Bible says if you humble yourself, he'll lift you up. And that's very true when it comes to anyone that you're dealing with. If they get humbled, then Jesus can lift them up. So how do you humble them?

Well, it's actually a lot easier than you may think. Evangelism Bootcamp really hones in on the fact that we are created, and creation is an incredible reality of God. But just to slow down and think about what God has done in your own personal body helps us to be more open to what God has done.

So let's go ahead and apply this. When you're sharing your faith with Evangelism Bootcamp, we first talk about why, when we're talking to somebody, like Noah's here with me. Noah, let's just go ahead and I'm going to share my faith with you. I'm going to act like you're not a Christian, okay? So you're going to have to pretend that you're not a Christian. Okay? All right. So what I want to do is I want to just basically run through with you a gospel presentation that I hope is going to help you in the future to share your faith and to not be afraid.

Because this is an easy path for us to go and share our faith. Okay? So I'm going to go ahead and just act like I don't know you, Noah. So here it goes. Hi, how are you today? You have to say good.

I'm good. I may never see you again, so I wanted to give you this. It helps to explain how we got the Bible. Now I'm going to give you a truelife.org card. On truelife.org, there's all free video answers to Life's Hard Questions. And if you're a Buddhist, an atheist, a Mormon, a Jehovah Witness, then there's a special video there for you.

You can go to truelife.org and see those cards. But I want to just say this to you, Noah. Did you know that you could go to church your entire life and not know how we got the Bible? Can I tell you how we got the Bible really quick? Yes.

Okay, great. Well, the Bible is written down by 40 different authors. Most of them never met each other over a period of 600 years, and it still tells the same story that lines up perfectly with archaeological data, history, and psychology. Every other holy book doesn't match these same standards, and they teach that you have to do some type of work to earn forgiveness for the bad things that you've done. You don't even know if you've done enough until you die.

But the Bible tells us you can know if you are going to heaven right now. I already know your name, so this is asking what is your name, and you say Noah. Right.

Well, it's nice to meet you, Noah. Can I tell you what helps me to believe in the miracle of God and Jesus and hell and heaven? Sure. Okay.

Well, there is a miracle happening right now. As I'm speaking to you, invisible sound waves are vibrating onto your eardrum. On the other side of your eardrum, there are three little bones that line up. And attach to your cochlea, which is a small snail shell structure that is filled with water and has thousands of hairs on its walls.

As the water moves, these hairs act like piano keys and create electronic signals so your brain can just begin to understand what I'm saying right now. So this helps me realize it doesn't make sense for me to think that I have the authority to say what God can and cannot do, because I have no idea how my ear was created. Well, the Bible says the bad things you've done, like telling a single lie, separate you from God because He is perfect. This means you can't go to heaven. But God loves you so much that He wants to be in a personal relationship with you, so you can go to heaven. So do you know what God did for you because He loves you so much, Noah?

No. God came as Jesus to live a perfect life for you so He could take all of your punishment. He then died in your place and He rose again from the dead so you can have forgiveness. The Bible says if you believe God did this for you, then you will receive forgiveness and the presence of God will fill you.

You will have true life and go to heaven. So I want to ask you, Noah, will you believe right now that God did this for you? Yes. Okay, Noah's already done that before.

What a great muscle thing. So you did a great job, but that kind of gives you an idea of Evangelism Boot Camp and what it's able to do very quickly. And by the way, in Evangelism Boot Camp, there's nine different worldviews that tells you exactly what to say to them. It doesn't give you like the history, like the dates and the times that these religions were.

It's not like looking at Wikipedia. Okay, we're talking about specifics on what to say to a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Catholic, a Muslim, and there's great QR codes you follow that actually take you to a link on truelife.org where you can watch these videos that have been pre-made for Mormons to watch or for atheists to watch. And you actually learn at the end that the people talking to you are converted from the information they just got done sharing.

So it is an incredible tool. EvangelismBootCamp.org. I can't encourage you guys enough. We have to rise up right now as a church.

Our window is limited. If we don't take our role in the Great Commission seriously, then we really do deserve what we're going to get. That's the passionate voice of Jesse Connors, who's an evangelist, an author, a TV production guru. He's done a whole lot. He's been in the ministry for many years. And you hear something like that, another dear brother in Christ, Ted Williams, who's been a pastor, he's been an entrepreneur, he's just invented a major new app. What goes through your mind when you hear Jesse just passionately share this?

We're at the Muse Coffee Shop in Lynchburg, Virginia with a neat kind of array of friends here. And Noah, thanks for being a good sport, by the way. But what do you hear when you hear this? Yeah, it's really important that we share the gospel. And it's not just—a lot of people think that it's the job of a pastor. That's the job of the pastor, to go out. And so my job is to maybe bring my friend to church.

And if I can just get my friend to come to church, maybe they'll hear the gospel and believe. That's not the way God has set up the church. The church is the church. We, as lay people in the church, are called to do the work of the ministry.

And in the church, when we go and we're under the leadership and we're under the authority of the pastors who are there, they teach us and they put things in our heart. I'll tell you, I was at a conference probably about five years ago, and this conference was for a bunch of college students. And somebody said something that just put me on edge so much. It made me so angry, to be honest.

And this was the story in a nutshell. This guy was talking about a family member who came and was confiding in him and saying, hey, I've got a big decision to make. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to go in the ministry, meaning a full-time, like in the church-type engagement, or if I'm supposed to go in the business world, I think maybe I'm supposed to be an attorney. So go into ministry full-time or be an attorney. Those were the two options. And this particular individual said something that set up something called a false dichotomy, and it made me so angry.

The answer was this. Why would you ever choose to do anything besides wake up every morning and go to serve the Lord? Now, what that person was saying by that was, you need to go in the ministry. But the false dichotomy is, if you're an attorney, you can't wake up every morning and serve the Lord.

That's false. So in the business world, which is where I am right now firmly rooted in the business world, every single day is ministry opportunity. My eyes are opened to the gospel, and if we can walk in the Spirit and we can look at people who we see through eyes of compassion, through lenses of compassion, then we are in ministry every day, and it doesn't matter what little badge we might have on our shirt. It doesn't matter. And I'm going to go to our panel real quick. Caleb is a student at Liberty Senior.

You just graduated actually, but I want to ask Brad here too, and then Joy, and then Noah. Each of you, I want to share your quick word about what he shared. You heard him give this very practical way. Noah played the role of an unbeliever, and Jesse shared the gospel with him. We don't do that a whole lot, sadly. Less than 4% of believers are even leading people to Christ.

What hit your heart about that, Caleb? Yeah, so I've been a Christian all my life, and I think most of the time it's easy to fall into convincing ourselves that we can share the gospel simply through our acts. And I think it's easy to be passive about that and to set a good example for people, but not always to go out of our way and actually share the truth of the gospel and the words of the Bible.

And it's because it's uncomfortable for most of us until you have the resources to do it and are confident in doing it and have practiced doing it. Here's your copy. Here it is. Yeah, I just gave him the copy of Evangelism Bootcamp. Go to evangelismbootcamp.org and get your copy too. There's a video that opens up the book.

It's 3D, and you can just see everything in it. I love it. That's so good, Caleb.

That's a great word. Yeah, and I just know from experience, when you are able to do it the first time, it's uncomfortable, but you learn, and you see the blessings and the fruit of it from actually sharing with people, not just living as an example. And what's your name, young man, and what year are you at Liberty? My name is Brad, and I'm a junior at Liberty.

What's your question? What's your takeaway from what Jesse shared about sharing the gospel to people, just having a conversation? It may be five seconds. It may be, like Ted said, in the middle of a job, work or something. I mean, it's a lot easier than most people think as to what Caleb was saying. The first few times, it's awkward, but once you get it down, it's easy.

You got it down. You got all these handouts and pens and everything, but from my personal experience and growing up in the radio and television ministry, that five minutes changes people's lives big time. And 20 years later, they'll come back, and they'll tell you about that, how my grandfather or my dad or mom changed their life long ago just by taking that quick little five minutes. Joy, what does it make you think, that you could share something with someone that could change their life forever, that could be the difference between heaven and hell for them? Of course, it's God doing the work, but God uses us.

What do you think? I think it's amazing, and I think that the most important part of the Christian faith is the fact that we're able to share it, and we can help it transform other people's lives the way it's transformed ours. And I think I'm blessed to have a father that can't help but share it.

Well, now I'm turning red. Noah, where would your life be today if no one had told you about Jesus? If they said, oh, we're not going to invite him to church, we're not going to tell him about God, we're not going to take him to camp, where would you be today? I think I would honestly have found my own way to God, a lot sooner actually, because I've been pushed into forcing to believe in God, but now I've found my own way. And I like to go around, and if I see somebody else that's struggling, or especially that's been in a circumstance that I've been in before, I can heavily relate. And I didn't have God in my life at a lot of those times, or bad and negative times in my life. And if I see somebody going through something similar, I like to help them and incorporate God into that, but also leave that up to them as an option for what they would like to believe. So you've taken that bad experience of being force-fed and turned it into a way to leverage toward Christ.

So amazing. I also wanted to point out that he's just sharing a major part of his testimony. It's the beauty from Ash's testimony. And what that means is when someone used to look at Noah, they looked at him as a failure. They looked at him as like that was his mom. His real mom would say that, or his parents could say that to him as his real life scenario. And now you hear him on the radio telling the world that he can go impact other people with what used to be ashes have now turned into diamonds.

And that's the business of who God is. God makes beauty from ashes, and Noah, you are a beautiful diamond, and God has such a great plan for your life. And he's just beginning. His path is so, so much better than what you can ever ask for or imagine. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. So we're turning the corner here.

We're at the Muse Coffee Shop in Lynchburg, Virginia. And Jesse is trying to equip every Christian in America to share their Jesus story. Jesse, tell us how that works. You've talked in the first segment about Evangelism Boot Camp.

You've actually given a book to one of our special awesome graduates of Liberty University here in Lynchburg. There's some great background music and aura. You've got the coffee machines in the background. I mean, these are not planned sound effects for this podcast.

We are in the grind, guys. The sounds of heaven, that's right. And that is the voice of Ted, who's an entrepreneur, loves Jesus, he's been a pastor, he's been a Christian musician, plays the guitar, and just a great man of God. And you've heard some testimonies, but you guys can take your phone, everyone that's listening on your phone, you're holding your phone, or grab your phone, and you can literally impact millions of people. Jesse, tell them how real quick by sharing your Jesus story.

This is so critical. Man, it's like it's chaptering off from one to the other. It's not really like moving into a different world.

It's actually all dovetailed together. But if you went to truelife.org right now, you would see that the Share My Jesus story is sitting on top of truelife.org. And what that allows you to do is it allows you to easily share your Jesus story. If you're comfortable sharing for just 15 seconds, 30 seconds, it allows you to do this.

If you're comfortable sharing for longer, then you can obviously do that too. The reality is if we don't share our faith, we're in disobedience to what God's told us to do. And so this is what the Great Commission is all about. We have to be active in sharing our faith. And I also want to emphasize that we can't wear the armor of God effectively if we don't have our shoes on. The gospel is the shoes. And so I want to just—that's right.

I mean, think about how effective as a shoeless soldier. If you're not sharing your faith actively, you're not experiencing the joy of Jesus in your life. Tell us practically how to do that. Everyone grab your phone and then just tell Noah and all these guys here, these young guns and even Ted, how can they share their Jesus story with millions of people right now on their phone? Just tell us real quick, practically, because this is going to go viral, and then all of a sudden you've weaponized every believer in America and the world to throw a little video up. And then when they're sharing the gospel and they give it a little track, they can put their link there and it goes to a website that has their story.

That's right. And I want to go ahead and do this right now. So if you're listening, grab your phone.

If you're driving, don't. Just I'll do my best verbally to do it. But on top of truelife.org, there's a place that appears for your Jesus story.

And I want you to go ahead and type this in. If you know how to do that, just type in truelife.org forward slash story forward slash Lauren. OK. That's an example of Lauren's testimony. Everyone gets their own URL. They can post it on social media. They can text it.

They can email it. Now, the beauty of this is, is that you're sharing your Jesus story on top of other videos that explain, with Ken Ham, how do we know there's a God? We have Jonathan Falwell talking about, is there really a heaven? We have a seminary president, Danny Aiken at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary talking about, is Jesus God? And we also have special videos for Mormons to watch or atheists to watch or Hindus to watch.

The list is very long, very comprehensive, and you know that we have done a very good job in order to be able to bring this to you today. Truelife.org is a place for you to go. So what you can do is click the Share My Jesus story, and then you get your own URL that you can use in a text message, in an email, on social media. And you can also use this in a way that is really nice with a QR code. So every single person that shares your Jesus story gets their own QR code. You can hit the View QR Code button, and then you can hold your phone in front of somebody, and then all of a sudden, they see your Jesus story. And it's not just you trying to help that person come to know Jesus. It's everyone below you trying to help people come to know Jesus. The key though is that every single person that shares their Jesus story is able to do this for free. But we do require one thing, that they say at the end of their Jesus story, you can share your Jesus story like me. Just click the Share Your Jesus Story button right above me right now. So that means if you have 100 people see your Jesus story, you will be able to impact other people to share their Jesus story. And if you multiply yourself by once or twice or three times, you can imagine that same progression will continue. And we can easily get to millions of people. The technology is releasing this month in order for that to happen, and it's ready for you right now.

We're at the Muse Coffee Shop. That's the voice of Jesse Connors, the author of the all-new evangelism boot camp. Joshua Dallas endorsed it.

It's amazing. Founder of truelife.org, and he is helping everyone share their Jesus story. Now, when people pray to receive Christ at your site, I mean, is there not a charge for that? I mean, there should be a charge for receiving Christ in the eternal life. You get forgiveness to send all that. Usually there should be some kind of charge, 100 bucks or something, for someone to get saved.

I mean, Jesse, you're missing an opportunity here, bud. Well, they tried that a little earlier, and then the Reformation happened. But I will tell you, it's wonderful to know that Jesus saves and that this is going to equip you to share that message easier. There's no more excuses.

There aren't. Go to truelife.org, go to evangelismbootcamp.org, and make the difference that Jesus has called you to make. It's in your heart. It's already there. The seed is there.

Just put some water on it and fertilizer and see what comes out. Awesome. Ted Williams, what's your final challenge that we get out of here about? And the importance just of sharing your faith, of living this out, incarnational. You know, you and I both have kids that are asking tough questions all the time.

You know, we're living in it. What would you say, take us home, Ted Williams, with a good challenge and kind of put a bow on it or bring the plane in for a landing? So, there are two things that I would say in final. The first is this. If we aren't walking in the Spirit, if we're not walking in the Spirit, and if we're not doing what we do out of love, we're a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. So, it's not about numbers.

It's not about, man, guess what I did today. It's about opening ourselves up to what the Lord wants to do through us. And if it's anything else, we're in just the wrong spirit. The Lord won't use us.

The second thing I want to say is this. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. So, walk in the Spirit and walk in faith.

Faith is required in anything that the Lord calls us to. What a blessing and it's awesome to see these young people. Everyone whipped their phone out in this coffee shop.

I wish you could have seen it. These Liberty kids and students and this one young man here who's training to be a professional mechanic and also is going to school. He opened up his phone and they downloaded it so now they can do a little video, Jesse, and they can tell their Jesus story to their phone, upload it. Now, everywhere you go, truelife.org. It's all for free and I want to encourage you right now. Don't miss out on the plan that God has for your life. His plan is for you to go out and share your faith.

If that's not a priority to you, then your priorities are wrong. Okay, truelife.org, don't wait. God bless you guys. Truth Talk. Learn more at our truthnetwork.com website. Amazing, huge thanks to all of our awesome affiliates worldwide, nationwide that carry this program, all of our listeners all over the world that listen. We have people in Germany, other people in other countries, India, that download this wonderful broadcast, podcast. Thank you guys, these young people, for letting being a part of this thing here at the Muse Coffee Shop in Lynchburg, Virginia.