In this podcast episode, Evangelist Daniel King interviews Pastor Paul Daugherty from Victory Church. They discuss the importance of missions and reaching out to communities. Pastor Paul shares how Victory Church has a long history of being involved in missions and sending young people on mission trips. They talk about the impact these trips have on teenagers, as they are stretched to share the gospel and experience the needs of others. Pastor Paul also emphasizes the importance of starting small and mobilizing the resources and people available to reach out to the lost. He shares some of the outreach activities Victory Church does, such as passing out groceries, ministering at nursing homes, and hosting productions to reach the unchurched.
Join Victory Church for an online church service: https://victory.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, my pastor, pastor Paul Daugherty. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (00:12):
Yes, sir. Honored to be with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:13):
Now we are here in El Salvador. Yes, sir. Santa Anna. And tonight is the first night of a big gospel crusade and we are so honored that Victory is down here helping us and partner with us for this crusade. Thank you for being here.
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (00:30):
Come on. It’s who we are. It’s what we’re excited about. And I’m sitting here with my hat on my T-shirt, shorts. It’s 96 degrees in El Salvador, back home in Tulsa. It’s probably 40 degrees, but we’re excited for tonight. We’ll be dressed up in our suits. We’ll be out there ministering to the people, and our team is excited. We got 138 teenagers. We brought from Tulsa from our church just to El Salvador. We have another almost a hundred plus that are out in other places. So altogether 253 teenagers, we brought from our church on missions to Greece, parts of Florida, and then big majority of them right here in El Salvador to partner with you and to be a part of Vista Evangelistic Outreach.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:15):
And we are so excited about what God has been doing through these young people from Victory Christian School from eighth grade all the way up to 11th grade is here with us. Yes sir. And my son Caleb, he’s in eighth grade at Victory. He’s been there ever since kindergarten, and he came on this trip and so he’s been out ministering in the schools, helping to deliver boxes of food to some poor people. I heard a testimony about him yesterday. He knocked on one door and gave them a box of food. It was his turn to pray for the family. And there was one woman, an older grandma in the house that wasn’t able to walk very well. And so my son, 14 years old, he said, can I pray for you? And he prayed for her and she lifted her crutch up in the air and started walking back and forth. And the team leaders were actually really excited and gave me the testimony. Then I asked him, he was like, yeah, she was healed.
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (02:11):
Oh my goodness. How cool is it though, that you get to go on, you get to do your normal crusades because you do this all the time, every year you do multiple evangelistic crusades. But I think it’s cool that you get to be with your son, with his school teamed up with your evangelistic ministry and your church. Is this the first time that’s happened or has it happened before?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:32):
I think for seeing someone get healed when he prayed for them, this might be the first time. That’s
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (02:38):
Amazing.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:39):
I mean, we’ve always encouraged him to pray for the sick, but just it changes a young person’s life when they see God work through them. And Victory has actually had a long history of being involved in missions. My parents, Robert and Susan King, they graduated from Victory’s Mission School back in 1988, and they went to Mexico, come on and started hosting groups that came from Victory Christian Center in Juarez in Juarez, Mexico. I went, yeah, they hosted it for like 13 years in a row. I remember there used to be these big groups of young people that would come down. We’d take them running through the streets of Juarez. And Victory has always believed in missions and especially in sending young people out on these mission trips. Why is this so important to victory, to be so involved in missions?
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (03:31):
Even as I’m looking at the teenagers right now around us, and if you’re listening to this podcast, you can’t see it, but we’re surrounded by teenagers that are all around the hotel area, and I love seeing their joy. I love seeing them come alive. They come on these trips and they forget about trying to look cool in front of their friends. They forget about all the drama back home that happens in middle school and high school, just boyfriends, girlfriends, even just academics. The focus is totally about sharing the gospel and something happens when they are stretched and pushed to go and pray for someone who’s sick, pass out food, share their testimony, lead someone to Christ. It challenges them to think beyond themselves in such a supernatural way. And they come alive. It’s like they wake up, their eyes are open to life being so much more fulfilling when they are a part of the Great commission. And our church has been doing this, like you said, my parents started Victory in 1981, Billy Joe and Sharon Darty and your parents were a part of one of those first years of missions training ministry that my parents began many years ago and we still do today. We
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:41):
Trained. It’s neat. There’s a second generation now and even a third generation. Third generation. Because you brought your son on this mission trip
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (04:47):
Too. Yeah, my parents trained your parents who trained you, who’s trained your son, and now I’m training my kids. And it’s amazing to see the generational impact. The church has been around for 43 years. The school started the same year as the church. And when the school began, my dad said, Hey, we’re going to train students up, not just to know math and English and science, and not just to play sports, but also to go on mission trips. And so we have chapels every week at our school, but then we have mission strip opportunities and we really start sending kids on missions in sixth grade and all the way up to 12th grade every spring break. They’ve been doing that since the eighties, the nineties, the two thousands. And now here we are in the 2020s. And so I think over the last 40 years, we’ve probably sent, not exaggerating any numbers, we’ve probably sent 5,000 teenagers on spring break mission trips over the last 40 plus years.
(05:45):
And then from those 5,000 hundreds of thousands, if not millions, impacted by their obedience to share the gospel all over the world in countries like Greece and El Salvador, Republic, Haiti, Ireland, England, China, Singapore, and as teenagers go out, my life was changed. I went to Juarez in sixth grade and I worked with your parents, sharing the gospel, going with my grade. We had probably 50 kids from our class that went, and our lives were forever impacted because we got to share the hope of Jesus. We passed out beans and rice, we did dramas. And your parents showed us what it looks like to really give our lives to the people with the gospel that lived in Mexico. We went to a place, I’ll never forget, called Garbage City in Juarez, an area where all the people lived in garbage.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:38):
They would go through the garbage just to find food to
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (06:40):
Eat, and they didn’t have shirts. A lot of these kids didn’t have shoes. They were running around in their underwear. And I remember just my heart broke and I was like, if this is the only reason I come on missions, it’s just to be reminded of how blessed I am to live where I live and to have a heart of gratitude and to break off any feelings of complaining or entitlement. I think that’s another big huge win for parents who send their kids on missions trips with victory is of course the kids are going to be stretched to share the gospel, the boldness of Jesus Christ. That’s a forever game changer. But the other part is their eyes are going to be open that 95% of the world lives on less than $2 a day, and so much of the world is impoverished. And when these American teenagers who have five pairs of shoes in their closet, they have have a good pillow, they have a good bed, air conditioning, a heater.
(07:33):
When they come to places where there is so much poverty and these kids don’t have a bed and they don’t have even a pair of shoes, it breaks their heart in a healthy way. And it reminds them the world is bigger than Oklahoma. The world’s bigger than America, and they need Jesus. And we need to live with generosity. We’re blessed to be a blessing. So I think there’s so many benefits of getting our teenagers on mission trips. I mean, it just is endless. And we’re now rotating our kids. We have five kids, a 10-year-old, 8-year-old, 5-year-old, 4-year-old, and a 2-year-old. And we’re rotating which one gets to go on missions each time I go out. So I’ve taken my oldest, I’ve taken my now 8-year-old, I’ve taken my 5-year-old, and eventually I’ll take our 4-year-old, 2-year-old as they get older. But it’s awesome getting to take them on missions.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:18):
Well, I’m so thankful for the heart that you have permissions and the heart that victory has had permissions for so many years, and I just want to personally say thank you because victory, when my parents went out as missionaries, victory started supporting them on a monthly basis and they helped to support them every single month for over 30 years. And in this day and age of so many churches, I think sometimes have lost the vision for missions. Victory is really special because you’ve kept this vision for missions, this vision for helping support missionaries. And so victory to this day continues to support missionaries all over the world. You’ve planted over 2000 Bible schools that are ongoing in different nations around the world and continuing to have impact. I mean, I remember I was in Ethiopia a couple of years ago and I was sitting and drinking coffee.
(09:15):
I heard someone talking about a Bible school and I talked to them and it was a victory Bible school that they had started after your father had visited Ethiopia in the middle of Ethiopia. And I just found him in the middle of nowhere, and I went and preached for them that day. It was really cool. That’s amazing. And so your father, pastor Billy Joe Dougherty was a great pastor, but he was also a great evangelist. Yes, sir. And he had a great heart for evangelism. I remember when I was 14 years old, I got to go to the Olympic Stadium in Russia at that time. He was doing a series of 18 months of crusades in Russia in St. Petersburg. And so when I was 14, I remember seeing thousands of people running to the altar call. And that had a big impact on my life, and it really gave me a vision to believe God, to bring people to Jesus. And to this day, that time that I saw the people rushing to the stadium in St. Petersburg, it makes me tear up when I think about it and say, oh God, do it again. Come on Jesus. I want to see people hungry for Jesus that come running up for altar calls.
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (10:26):
Come on Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:27):
And so victory has, you have a great heart for evangelism, and it’s not just foreign missions, but you also have a great heart for reaching people in Tulsa. And so we have a lot of pastors that listen to this podcast. What would you say to encourage pastors who want to reach out to their communities and then reach out to the world?
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (10:48):
Well, I think one, just the importance of doing one thing at a time, starting one day at a time with what you have. If you’re a pastor of 20 people in a rural town, and you may not have all the resources that a large church like victory might have, but you still have resources, you still have 20 people that could be mobilized to be evangelistic minded. And so mobilizing who you have and what you have to use for the gospel and for the advancement of bringing hope and compassion, people need Jesus. And so whether your town is a thousand people or 10,000 people or a hundred thousand people, there’s a percentage of those people that have not yet given their hearts to Christ and need hope. There’s a percentage of those people that are dealing with loneliness, depression, suicidal thoughts, addictions, and they’ve drifted from God.
(11:39):
And so how do we go after them? I think what I would encourage pastors with is be consumed with that lost sheep. Be thinking about that. Lost sheep. Of course, we want to disciple the 99. We want to give our hearts and lives to the people that are in the church and equip them, but we don’t want to forget about the people who aren’t here yet, the people who haven’t accepted Christ and the people who are not inside church yet. And so I would just encourage pastors, think about what you could do every week to mobilize your people to go and share the gospel telling them like, Hey, let’s use our social media. Let’s use our platforms on YouTube. Let’s use our voice at work. Let’s share the gospel. Let’s get some invite cards to our church. Let’s get some witnessing tracks, and then let’s pass out groceries for our church.
(12:25):
We’re always passing out groceries. We’re doing all types of different physical outreaches to our city, cleaning up parks, showing up and ministering at nursing homes, showing up to apartment complexes where there’s tons of boys and girls. And we will set up a sound system and we’ll just do a pop-up children’s church service, pass out candy, pass out, invite cards to church, and then pray with families. And through those outreaches, it brings in that lost sheep, that person who’s not yet right with God, not in church. A couple of big things we do every year is an Easter production and at Christmas production. And then we do some different carnivals that we do for our city. And we use these as tools to evangelize, to witness to people who are not really following Jesus, don’t know Jesus, haven’t given their hearts to Jesus, and whatever we can do to get them in the doors.
(13:17):
And so we’ve got a big one coming up next week for Easter, and I don’t know when this will be aired, but on the week of Easter this year, 2024, we’re going to be doing six really big half film, half live production like services with 300 cast members. And what we’ve said to people in our church is this isn’t for church people, this is for unchurched people. Now, if you’re a church person, come but come with somebody who’s not in church. Bring somebody with you. Invite your family members. If you don’t know anyone who doesn’t know Jesus, go find someone. Use your social media. Tell people to tune in online. And our goal is not to entertain Christians. Our goal is to reach the lost. So we try to tell the story of Jesus in a creative way. We use all kinds of dance and music and Broadway like production and then film these days.
(14:07):
So many people are reached through movies and through shows. That’s why I’m thankful for some of the great Christian movies and shows out there that are trying to tell the story of Jesus. And no one’s going to be able to do it perfect in the eyes of a religious person. And I think we have to let go of that. I think at the end of the day, we need to go. Are we talking about the cross? Are we talking about resurrection? Are we giving people a opportunity to accept Jesus in their heart and repent of their sins? If we’re doing that, then all the other stuff, the way it’s done, the music the day and all that stuff, we just need to not make a big deal out of. Because if we’re getting people saved, that’s what counts. And giving them really an invitation to know Jesus died for you.
(14:47):
Jesus rose from the grave for you. Jesus cares about you. And so our church does that. And last year we had probably a thousand people get saved in Tulsa through those outreaches. And then we had tens of thousands of people who weren’t in church who came back for the first time and attended a service. And whether they got saved or not, a seed was planted. And so that seed grows in the water and what Paul and Apollo say, but our prayer as a church is we’re going to do anything and everything to reach the lost and disciple the found to go and reach the lost.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:20):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for your heart for missions. We’re so grateful that you are here in El Salvador with us. Thank you for bringing over 130 teenagers down here. What a blessing they are. And it is really changed some of their lives. I was thinking about last night, there was a baptism service and some of the team members that came said, I want to rededicate my life, or I want to dedicate my life to Jesus. And right in the pool, right behind us over here, you started to baptize them. And so it is changing their lives forever. And they will remember that for many years to come. And I believe these teenagers will, some of them will become missionaries, some of them will be pastors evangel. They’ll have a heart for evangelism, they’ll support evangelists, they’ll support missions. And so it’s really significant what Victory Church is doing. So Pastor Paul, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate and thank you for being on The Evangelism Podcast.
Pastor Paul Daugherty – Victory Church (16:18):
Hey, thank you so much.
