Description: Joe Franklin grew up as a pastor’s kid serving his father Rickey Franklin, the pastor of New Day Church in South Lake, Texas. But from the age of five he knew he was called to be an evangelist. For three years, he became a youth pastor for his father’s church, but now he is launching out into full-time evangelism. On today’s Podcast, Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach, interviews him about his decision to become an evangelist and about an evangelistic outreach he is doing today.
Show Notes:
Joe Franklin was a pastor’s kid as he grew up but his passion was always for evangelism. Now after attending the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp, he is transitioning to becoming a full-time evangelist.
In today’s podcast, he shares about how he has been organizing evangelistic outreaches in several American towns including: Wincheter, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee; and Dallas, Texas.
Transcription
Daniel King (00:01):
I’m evangelist Daniel King. And my favorite verse in the whole Bible is everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. I’m with my friend, Joe Franklin. And he is excited about evangelism, Joe, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Joe Franklin (00:18):
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, dr. King. It’s an honor.
Daniel King (00:21):
Now you’re here at new day church in South Lake, Texas. Your father’s the pastor here. His name is Ricky, Ricky Franklin. And tell me a little bit about how you grew up as a pastor’s kid.
Joe Franklin (00:39):
Yeah, so I grew up with, I’ve not eight brothers and sisters, six brothers, three sisters. And so I grew up in a big family and with a pastor’s kid, my parents always invited us into ministry. So if a candidate share my testimony real quick, we actually went to our revival meeting and I saw this vision of myself riding into heaven on my parents’ back. And they were on roller skates and they’re riding into the pearly Gates. And as they go in, I get pushed back off their back. And I hear Jesus’s voice say, I want to know you for you. I want to have my own personal relationship with you. I grew up learning a lot about God when I was five years old, I told the Sunday school teacher, you’re not telling the story, right. It goes like this. And I got up there and taught the class. So I knew about God, but it wasn’t until I was 13 that I really knew. God is a personal Lord and savior and it changed my life forever.
Daniel King (01:31):
And so that vision was an encounter with God. And did you ever resent being a pastor’s kid? I didn’t. I loved it. Did you ever have a time of rebellion or running away from God?
Joe Franklin (01:43):
No, not really. No. No.
Daniel King (01:47):
Really. I was actually raised by parents who were Christians and they were missionaries in Mexico. And so to be part of our family was to be part of the ministry. I’m a big believer that God does not just call individuals. He calls families. He’s a generational God. He’s the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And so he’s the God of Ricky Franklin and Joe Franklin. And you’re not married yet. You don’t have any kids yet? Not yet. So no kids yet, but someday you’ll have kids and the anointing increases from generation to generation. And so you’ve, you’ve been involved in ministry growing up here at the church, but now you feel called to be an evangelist. You, you, you actually were youth pastor here at the church for how long were you? The youth pastor? I was youth pastor here for three years. Okay. And then now you, you feel called to be an evangelist. Tell me how did that happen? How did you know that you were called to be an evangelist? When I was
Joe Franklin (02:44):
Five years old, me and my four siblings are sitting in the van and the, the sky prophet from New Zealand to just spoken at the youth group. My dad is the youth pastor at the time and he came over to the van and he just began to prophesize over each one of us. And when he got me, he just said, I see the nations coming to you. I see you going all over the world and preaching the gospel of Jesus and bringing millions of people to Jesus. And just prophesied that over me, this calling of evangelists on my life. And ever since then, I’ve always been drawn to people and drawn people just come to me and they tell me their life story. And I’m able to just share Jesus with them and just have a heart to see people come to know Jesus.
Daniel King (03:25):
How old were you when that man gave the prophecy? I was just five years old. Wow. That is very similar to my story because when I was five years old, someone prophesied that I was called to be an evangelist. So my father pastored a little tiny church in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. It was just a very small, like 12 people in the church. And one day he invited a prophetess to come. And so God woke her up the night before and said tomorrow morning in church, there will be someone wearing a blue shirt in your, the prophecy that the person wearing the blue shirt is called to be an evangelist. So she came looking for whoever had a blue shirt, no one was wearing a blue shirt. So she preached for a while, hoping someone would come in, but no one came in late. And then she remembered that all the kids workers were downstairs.
Daniel King (04:07):
So she turned to my dad and said, could you please bring all the kids workers? God has given me a word for someone. So they all come up and none of them are wearing a blue shirt, but there’s a long line of kids. And at the end of the line was this cute little, five year old boy wearing a blue shirt. And she said, God, is this the one that God said? Yes. And so she prophesied over me that Dan says you are called to be an evangelist and go to the nations to preach the gospel. And so from one five-year-old evangelist to another, gimme five. That’s amazing. And I didn’t waste any time. I preached my first sermon when I was six years old, come on and we still have the cassette tape from it. My parents do. And I sound like an evangelist on that cassette tape. One of the things I say is if you are saved, stay saved. If you’re not saved, you better get saved. So, so when you were growing up, that’s awesome. Did you look at books of evangelists and stories of evangelists? Tell me about how you fed that, that passion for evangelism.
Joe Franklin (05:04):
Yeah. Growing up, that’s funny. My extra, my first sermon was people get ready. Jesus is coming.
Daniel King (05:09):
That’s a good sermon. How old were you when you were like five years old? Five years old? Yes. All right. So, and as far as books
Joe Franklin (05:17):
We read my parents read to us every night. And so they read to us the heavenly man by brother Yan, they’d read to us Heidi Baker’s books on unconditional love. They read to us these old missionary stories and these old evangelists going across the world and preaching the gospel. And so, and grow. I grew up hearing about Reinhard bunkie. I actually got to meet Reinhard Bonnke he, when I was 10 years old and he just inspired me, so, so much to go after it and to preach the gospel everywhere and to believe God for big, big things. So who would you,
Daniel King (05:46):
He says your favorite evangelist. It’s gotta be Reinhardt. It’s gotta be Reinhard amen. He’s he’s an amazing man of God is led over 80,000, 80 million people to Christ in his lifetime. What a tremendous achievement. And so that’s actually where you and I met at the Christ for all nations evangelism bootcamp, which is being hosted by Daniel Kolenda, who is a Reinhardt Bunky successor. And so you were a student there and I was one of the instructors to tell me some of the things that you learned in school. And did you learn anything in my class?
Joe Franklin (06:24):
The other guy, amazing things from dr. King. I think my favorite thing where the five smooth stones, right? The for the sermon, a story, a solicitation, a scripture a good structure in it. And the last one is, is really important and I’ve forgotten it.
Daniel King (06:42):
Those are actually Daniel Kolenda. And so he told me to preach it. He gave it to me and then he says like, this is the structure I want you to follow. So I’ll give him credit. But
Joe Franklin (06:52):
The other one, it was good from you. Dr. King was, I told this chicken story, dr. King tells this amazing story and he puts his whole heart and soul into it. And I learned how to tell a good story and put your whole heart and soul to it. And I’ve actually told that same story and fallen on the ground just like you did in class.
Daniel King (07:08):
So, so can you show our audience how I did it in class? Yeah.
Joe Franklin (07:11):
So in class he gets up and he tells the story of the chicken and this chicken dies and he goes around the room and he goes, and he falls over completely on the ground and make the best chicken noise. We heard all for the whole six months of bootcamp.
Daniel King (07:28):
That’s awesome. Okay. So since you graduated so much from bootcamp, you were launched out into evangelism and now you’re going to be a full time evangelist. Yes, sir. And you’ve already been starting to do outreaches here in the United States. And so you’ve done an outreach in Winchester, Tennessee in Nashville, Tennessee, and then in Dallas, Texas, it tell me about those outreaches in who participated and how did those come together?
Joe Franklin (08:00):
Yeah, so we just had a heart, like just feeling the Lord, drawing us a couple of different people to do something while we were here in the United States, our trip to Africa got pushed back. And so he said, let’s, let’s do something for God right here. The harvest is ripe right here in America. So let’s see what God will do right here. And so we went to one student, Eric dykes, his hometown and in Winchester, Tennessee, and we saw 30 people give their lives to Jesus. We saw a youth group of we saw a couple of youth groups come together and there was about 75 youth there on Wednesday night. All of them left, healed, filled with the Holy spirit and saved. And so that was awesome right there. We got to see God break off depression off of people. Eric’s cousin got radically saved and set free of a lot of demons and was on dope 20 minutes before one of the services and came and got delivered of those demons. And then didn’t have any detox symptoms at all, all week long. I’m sure that he can come on and tell that story,
Daniel King (09:02):
But yeah, we’ll definitely listen to his story. Now, tonight, we are here in South Lake, Texas at your home church where your father pastors and we’re, you’re doing an outreach. Tell me about the outreach. How have you organized it? What’s going to happen tonight and what are you expecting God to do?
Joe Franklin (09:23):
Yeah, we, so we started organizing it by calling my dad, passed tricky and getting him to get on the phone and to call some other local pastors and just create a little bit of a buzz and to say, Hey, we’re going to do this. And we’re going to do something in the midst of a pandemic. We’re believing God that souls are going to be saved. Lives are going to be changed. People are going to get healed. People are going to get set free. And this week so far, we’ve seen over six people give their lives to Jesus. Hallelujah. Wow. That’s amazing. That’s great malls and all over. Yeah, it’s been incredible. And tonight we just organized the event. We got these bounce houses from from our church organization has these bounce houses at the ready and available for churches. And so we were able to get those and rent those out. We called the food truck and got a food truck out here. And then we just said, let’s just believe God for miracles. Believe God for salvation. And so we went around and we invited the public and went door to door.
Daniel King (10:16):
How did you get them to go? You were going through the neighborhoods door to door, putting flyers out, inviting people to come. Yes.
Joe Franklin (10:24):
Yes, exactly. And we made an event on Facebook and asked them to come on Facebook and just had all of our church people share it with all their friends and say, please share, share, share, invite your friends via Facebook, and then hand out flyers and personal inventory.
Daniel King (10:40):
Before we started this podcast, I noticed that out there, there are already kids that are in the bounce houses there. They’re bouncing there. They’re having fun. You’ve got the food truck. People are eating food. I saw you had a little platform set up with, with some chairs. And so we’re going to have a time of ministry to people tonight. And how many people do you think might come
Joe Franklin (11:03):
Even God for a hundred people. If we had a hundred people, it’d be just absolutely amazing and would just blow, blow me away.
Daniel King (11:10):
I think that’s tremendous what a tremendous vision, because you know, a lot of people think about doing crusades over in Africa or in Asia. You see thousands of people that come, but you know, we also need to reach people right here in our backyard right here in America. And so for a local church to do an outreach, I think every church should do at least four or five major outreaches a year. At least every quarter, they should be out there in the neighborhood, inviting people to come doing an outreach. And that’s the way that the church grows is if you’re out there telling people about Jesus. And so tell me some about how how does the gift of the evangelist function in a local church setting? So, so obviously you’ve been here, you’ve been serving your father and his vision. You have this calling as an evangelist. And so how do you function as of in advance Solice but in an American local church setting? Yeah,
Joe Franklin (12:13):
I think for me the biggest thing is bringing that faith to the equation, the faith to believe God for big things. The pastor’s wife, my mom last night said, this is the most exciting thing we’ve done in two years. Wow. She said, this is so exciting. She said, I thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for bringing some friends with you that would say, Hey, we believe God that he can do mighty things, even in the midst of everything that’s going on in this nation. And so I think just bringing that faith to believe God, that God can break things open and that the gospel is powerful and still effective today. And that the gospel still works.
Daniel King (12:52):
And so as evangelists, we are like fishermen. Yes. And we’re looking for the right bait to catch people for Jesus. And just a little bit ago, you showed me some costumes that you guys made as, as bait because kids like costumes. Tell me about the costumes that the church made. Yeah.
Joe Franklin (13:11):
Yeah. So the church does a vacation Bible school every year and they made the costumes for that. And they wrote scripts that just teach kids about the Bible and teach kids about God using these characters like monsters, inc. Can we say that again?
Daniel King (13:24):
Yeah. Go, go for it. So, so you did, you did monster
Joe Franklin (13:27):
Zinc Madagascar. We did.
Daniel King (13:30):
I won’t tell gloomy Disney, if you don’t despicable me.
Joe Franklin (13:35):
And we use all those characters to tell the story of Jesus. It just in creative ways. And actually the lion from Madagascar is actually at home in Mexico right now helping a missionary there to preach the gospel.
Daniel King (13:48):
Wow. That’s tremendous. And so you’re using different ways to attract the kids to come and then to be able to share with them about Jesus. Wow. What a tremendous blessing today.
Joe Franklin (14:00):
Yeah. We went around with a big minion costume and people were running. People were running to us. Usually we were running out to the people, you know, but the people were running to us and we got to share the gospel with them through that minion being out there as well.
Daniel King (14:12):
Awesome. And so you feel called to be a full time evangelist. So you want to do crusades. Tell me what happens next. Where are you going to go and start preaching to big crowds of people? Yeah.
Joe Franklin (14:23):
So I’m going to Southeast Asia going to Pakistan and we’re going to do a crusade there and October, and it’s going to be incredible. And then believing God to do one in a crusade in Burkina Faso as well, and also in India. And so just believing God for mighty things next year is going to be amazing. We’re also going to do a crusade in Mexico and then maybe do a couple outreaches at home in Dearborn,
Daniel King (14:47):
In Baltimore as well. So you’re doing events here in the States and then also going overseas. Wow, sir, you’re going to see such tremendous fruit. I’m so honored that you were one of my students and I’m so proud of you because you didn’t just listen in the classroom. You’re putting it to work. You’re already leading people to Jesus and seeing fruit from that. And I know that all the angels in heaven are rejoicing for all the people that are getting saved. So I I’m, I’m proud of you. I’m amazed, Joe. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s great to have you on today. Thank you, dr. King, bless you.
