Today on The Evangelism Podcast, Daniel King interviews Bret Sipek, a Christ for All Nations Crusade Director, about their recent successful crusade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They discuss the challenges and miracles they experienced during the organization of the crusade, including the logistics of transporting equipment and the overwhelming response from the people. You will learn the secrets of organizing a successful crusade in Africa.
Learn more about Christ for All Nations: https://cfan.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest here today, Brett Pac. And thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (00:12):
Thank you so very much evangelist Daniel. It’s so, such an honor for me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:16):
So we are here in the Democratic Republic of Congo and we have just completed a very successful crusade in Ika with Christ for all nations. And you’ve been working with Christ for All Nations for many years, helping to organize crusades, and you have helped to organize a series of crusades across the nation. Tell me what have been some of the biggest challenges and also the biggest miracles that you’ve seen here in Congo.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (00:51):
Well the Congo, as you can see, democratic Republic of Congo is a very different level than many other African countries. Even some of our African coworkers, directors said, we never ever in our life seen so much poverty. So the infrastructure is very, very, very low. There are people living in the houses, there’s no water, no electricity, electricity comes from only from Gensets, which are expensive and water is distributed in the barrels and people have to buy. So there’s a lot of challenges in just a pure staying in the country. And first of all, we are amazed of the hunger of people, the response of people. People are very hunger, very responsive. We see so powerful response for altar call. I know that in Gda gca, you had almost every hand raised, I was looking at the numbers and I was like, oh my almost everybody in the crowd wants to receive Jesus. And that’s true. The country is Christianized, but many people has very more prodigal sense relationship or sleen relationships or more like a nominal Christian relationship with Jesus. So it is so important to preach gospel and we are so excited to have you here in gda gca. Yeah, it’s a great honor for us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:26):
Well, I want to say thank you to you and to the entire staff of Christ for all nations. I know that it has been a lot of work organizing here in Congo. Great challenges. I was watching the trucks, the pictures of them coming across the country to get to this place. It took several weeks and at one point they’re only going like 30 kilometers a day because the roads are so bad.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (02:51):
It is, yeah. It was really a new challenge, a new level of challenge for us. And we have experienced drivers like Vinny Wetland, our chief driver. He’s very well experienced. He crisscrossed Africa, all the roads that you can imagine, and he really believed that he will be able to, he would be able to make it, but they had to stop and they had to go back to Mumbai after three, four days, pushing forward, pressing forward. It was simply impossible because they have 20 meters, 60 feet, long track, very heavy, like 40 metric tons. And you can go on the road and suddenly there is a big, big bump down, maybe one and a half meter, five feet deep, and in between are another bumps. So the trucks, they had to use beams to support the wheels. It was so difficult, so much dust because it’s a dry season. It was very a load load of dust. So we had to and unload, unload and load everything to the local, they call it hobo trucks. It’s more like kind of construction side tracks or kind of military truck with higher, higher chassis and bigger wheels. And that’s how we finally get it to the crusade locations. That was the biggest logistics challenge probably in so many
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:23):
Years. I mean this is true pioneer crusading. It is, yeah. But it’s very rewarding because in Ganja where I was, there had never been a crusade there before. The people were so hungry and they came from everywhere and they were ready to receive Jesus.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (04:44):
Yeah, I’ve seen the photos. It was powerful crowd and all our stuff on ground, they were amazed. And you are very right. There was never, ever international evangelist crusade, like maybe some local crusades. We sometimes call it like church yard crusade, which is good. People can come, but typically like one 2000 people know your number. I was looking like 50, 60,000, maybe even bigger. I was so amazed. It never ever a day, never ever heard in this city. And it was the same for we do all, actually we already did four ess including Yor, inand, gca in every place. We were amazed like
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:22):
This. And you have two more coming up. We have
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:24):
Two more. We have two more in another big, big city called Kanga, probably 1.2 million people. So we expect another great
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:32):
Harvest. And my good friend Nathan Morris is coming for that crusade. You’re
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:35):
Excited
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:36):
To have the nation. It’s wonderful. And Ruben’s, Kya will come as well this coming week. And so it is really exciting to see the teamwork between different ministries, different evangelists working together.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:49):
I believe that that’s the part of end time vision that we are really standing together. Evangelists are like lone runners. You want to go and you want to press forward, push forward. But we need to understand that some territories are too big for one ministry, even for two ministry. So we really need to strategize how we can make it. And Congo, Congo is over 110 million people and the territory of Congo is 2.4 million square kilometers, which is like six times bigger than Germany in Europe. It is huge territory. And as there is no logistics, we need to go to some region. Now we are in the region called Kasai, Kasai Central Car Oriental, and it’s just a little part of Congo in a way. But still we need combined four like yourself, evangelist Nathan Morris, evangelist Ruben. That’s the beauty of it. End time harvest, let’s press forward, let’s push forward.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:51):
Together everyone achieves more. We can do it by working together. Now you have come from the Czech Republic and you were friends with one of my friends, Terry Hinshaw and Terry and Brenda Hinshaw many years ago went to the Czech Republic to plant a church, a victory Christian Center. And you knew them all the way back
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (07:17):
All those years ago. It was more than 30 years ago. As you know, evangelist Billy Ty, he did a crusade in St. Petersburg, Russia in early nineties after the fall of regime.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:30):
That was the first crusade I ever went to. Really? I was 14 years old. I went to one of the Crusades in St. Petersburg, Peter Praise. And I remember 30,000 people ran as fast as they could to the altar call when he gave the altar call. They were so hungry for God, they just ran forward. And I think that had a big impact on my life and is one of the reasons that I’m so excited about being an evangelist.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (07:52):
It was kind of like Holy Spirit outpouring in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union right after the communist regime collapsed. We’ve seen it in many countries in Czech Republic, in Hungary, in Bulgaria, most very much in Russia, Soviet United at this time. So it was, people are so hungry for God. And at this time we connected with, as you mentioned, with missionaries Terry and Brenda Hechos. We helped them to relocate from St. Petersburg to Czech Republic and then help them to start a church. It was great. We have great memories. It was so beautiful time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:31):
Then how did you get connected with Christ for all Nations?
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (08:33):
Well, I always admired Evangelist Rein Haron from early eighties when I seen him pushing forward in Africa. And it was kind of like my dream to meet him sometime and to be around him. And it happened in 2002 when he came to Prague, Czech Republic for a small Christian conference, and I happened be his driver driving evangelist Bunker. It was a great privilege and great experience because he was sharing his heart and his heart was evangelism. His life was what he was preaching, just so winning. So winning, so winning. I asked him whatever question I could ask. He always end up with evangelism. So many. I was like, oh my. He’s so much focus at this time. I realized focus in your life is something that will take you way higher. So evangelism was like embodiment of focus. Focus on the soul’s focus on Africa. Africa shall bee. So it was my first connection in 2002, and then I ended up to go for on Cruise eight one, cruise eight in Aki Nigeria. And it was mind blowing. It was time of huge opening and outpouring of holy the Spirit after 10 years of closed in Nigeria. And it was time of super, super great harvest and powerful miracles.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:52):
And what is your role with Christ for all nations now?
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (09:55):
I am a crusade director and in a way, crusade Director is somebody who’s preparing the stage for evangelists like yourself or evangelist Reinhard Bonky and or now evangelist Daniel Kolenda. My goal is to see the powerful harvest. I’m praying for harvest. It is like mobilizing all the local churches. We are meeting hundreds of churches sitting with bishops, these pastors, and face-to-face, sharing the vision. It may seem easy to get several hundred pastors together, but I can tell you it’s not that easy as it may seem. They have so many different opinions, so many different church backgrounds. So it’s a lot of work. As Evangelist Bunker used to say, you have to drink a lot of coffees to cast the vision. So that’s what we are doing, casting division. And then of course we need to do a lot of logistics things and mobilizing training the volunteers. We are training for your crusade. In gda gca, we trained well over 10,000 local volunteers, giving them teaching what we want to do, how we want to reach out to people on ground. And after that, when you have to make the bridge from the crusade to the churches. So that’s the big part. And then of course the event management itself that you experience. We are on the meeting, we have everything on spot. Generators are working like sound is working on. It may seems easy when the show runs, but the
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:26):
Backstage, there’s a lot of logistics behind it. It is, it is. They say with the military, they run on logistics. And I think it’s true of crusade evangelism too. The logistics is so important. It’s not just the preaching. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to make a successful event.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (11:47):
I always say to our directors, if you want to fire fall on some ground, you need to prepare a lot of material, which is flammable like a lot of wood. Everything that you can bring together. And this is our task, prepare everything, make sure that people would come definitely for the first night or for the whole crusades, because when people are there and evangelists preach gospel and the Holy Spirit come, there is thousand or tens of thousand people that are ready to hear because we are preparing them for it. And if you do a lousy job as a crusade director, you have just few hundred people. Evangelists can do his best. He can preach his heart, and it doesn’t have too much impact because there is just few hundred people. But if there is already 10, 20, or in your case, I would think that the first night it was already like 70,000 people. It was mind blowing. In other crusades, we typically see five, 10, maybe 15,000. But in here in Congo, everything is twice or three times bigger. And we are really excited
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:49):
Now. Something very special happened this last week here in Muji Maya. Your daughter preached a woman’s crusade. And tell me about that and how that came to pass.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (13:01):
No, Yana, Ava, our daughter, she’s here with her husband David. He’s working as a technician. She had a dream to preach gospel in Congo. She was preaching now in Uganda and in many, many different places in churches doing kind of this crusade director’s work. Now she’s transiting, although to being evangelist, and she’s doing I believe very, very good. And the dream was like, I want to preach gospel in Ji Mai. But when we shared with a local bishop, they were like, yeah, well, we don’t like women to preach. They should rather sit at home and maybe do cooking or cleaning of the house, all these old school mentality. So you cannot change the whole culture in one shot. But we didn’t want to just submit. We were like, okay, okay, what we can do, what the woman can do. Okay, she can sing. She can prophesize. She can teach ladies. Oh good. If she can teach ladies, she can preach like the ladies conference or ladies crusade. Yeah, for sure. No problem. So that was the discussion. So that’s how we jumped into this ladies crusade. Of course, many children and many husbands came, so no doubt.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:16):
Well, I heard her preach the other night and the adulterous woman, and she did such a powerful job. Amen. Your daughter is a great evangelist. Amen. You were sitting on the platform with your wife and I could see you are a very proud papa.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (14:29):
Proud, proud papa. Yeah, definitely. Honestly, when I was young, it was my dream to preach Crusades. Now my dream is a little bit different. I want to train crusade directors. That’s my dream to see that there are evangelists trained by evangelist Daniel Kolenda or other evangelistic ministries. But we also need to train crusade directors because without crusade directors, the impact of evangelists is limited. So that’s my dream. So we are now training teams of these crusade directors, and that’s how we can do six crusades in three weeks because we have six teams. And that’s the beauty
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:04):
Of it. Well, I say thank God for that vision. Every crusade evangelist needs a good crusade director. And so I believe that as God raises up more evangelists, more people that have gifts with administration and organizing and meeting pastors and all of the logistics of doing the crusade, God will raise them up as well. Praise God. We need them
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (15:25):
All. Amen. Thank you so very much for,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:27):
Well, brother Brent, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast and thank you for your work here. And thank you for organizing such a beautiful crusading. It was wonderful.
Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (15:38):
Daniel, thank you for coming. We really honor you. We appreciate your hard work. We know that it’s not easy to come to travel in and out to fundraise. Thank you so very much. We really honor you and let’s pray and strategize for the future, how the impact on the territories can be even bigger. So thank you so very much and God bless you and thank you for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:00):
Amen. Amen.
