Reggie and Angela van Dinter are missionary evangelists to the UK and Europe. They love reaching out to the least, the last, and the lost. Listen today as Reggie talks about the challenges and rewards of training evangelists in the United Kingdom.
Connect with Reggie van Dinter: https://arministries.co.uk/
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, Reggie Van Dinter, thank you so much for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Reggie van Dinter (00:12):
It’s such an honor to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:15):
So you are originally from the Netherlands. Yes. But you’re serving God as a missionary to the United Kingdom. You and your wife Angela are living there. And right now we are in Bogota, Columbia for a collaborative crusade event. 12 different cities are having crusades at the same time. And you’re doing one of the cities and I’m doing one in the cities. So what are you excited about today, Reggie?
Reggie van Dinter (00:41):
So actually we’re on Alejandro’s team. So we, we, we join Alejandro to to Santa Mata. So that’s incredible. What I’m excited about today is, my goodness, this is the first time that I’m actually putting food in a presidential house. And actually with all of the evangelists together going and prayer, walking across the presidential buildings is absolutely amazing. I mean, I see that as a absolutely God divine moment, like a divine God incident. You know, sometimes people speak about, oh yeah, that’s a coincidence. No, I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in God incidences, and this is very much a God incident. You know, God really orchestrated this. I’m just really excited you know, to just pray a walk, you know, those buildings and just proclaiming the, proclaiming the good news of Jesus over the Presidential House. And at the same time, you know, when we go up to the mountain to go and pray over the city with all of us, it’s gonna be incredible. I’m, I’m just so excited. Yesterday I was in a plane. I was so buzzing at the moment that we arrived in Mexico already. I was like, Angela, I’m so excited. We’re, we’re, I’m actually in Latin America now because Mexico is Latin America as well. And yeah, I’m, I’m just, yeah, I’m just so expecting, you know, so many things that I can share, but then we sit here for a whole day.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:05):
So tell me about your ministry and what you feel called by God to do
Reggie van Dinter (02:10):
So. Our ministry has pretty much various vision. So our heart is evangelism, missions discipleship, unity social action. My wife is, my wife is a real a real activist. She loves to just invest, investing people like one on one you know, feeding the poor, looking after children orphanages and, and yeah. So, so we’ve kind of incorporated that, that in our ministry to kind of like set up kind of like a mercy ministry as part of, you know, preaching the gospel because yeah, that’s, that’s very much what’s part of, of, of what we do. So and also co consultancy, because we both have been in ministry altogether about 30 plus years, me like 10 plus years in evangelistic being involved. I’ve been a youth pastor in an ALG church, so I, I worked as a youth pastor as well full-time.
(03:06):
So we, we’ve combined our experience in ministry and God really gave us a ministry to, to basically help churches to look more outward focused. And and, and I think one of the things that’s very key in our you know, in our ministry is to be kind of like revivalist, I would say, you know, our heart is to revitalize churches that are on the brink of dying. That that may be on the brink of like, kind of like say, well, we don’t know what to do anymore. How do we reach our local community? That’s where we come in. That’s where we like, Hey, come on. You know, we want to come alongside you and we want to strategize and plan a, you know, vision cast of how we can reach a local community for Jesus. So we’ve recently done a mission in Birmingham in the uk.
(03:52):
We’ve come alongside. Yeah, tell me about that. What, what did God do in Birmingham? So so we went in Birmingham. We, we, so at one point we had a friend telling us, why don’t you send emails to churches and introduce your ministry and introduce what you do so that people get to know what you do and stuff. So we, I, so basically I went through all of the, a OG churches in the uk, sent a whole list. <Laugh> sent a, sent, sent an email introducing a ministry to like more than 500 churches in the ALG network in the uk. And and just see what happens. This particular church reached out, was an ALG church in Birmingham, west Bromwich actually, which is an area. And they said, well, we’re, we’re organizing a eastern mission the fifth till the 9th of April. Do you think you will be able to, to do this?
(04:35):
Would you be able to come alongside us and, and, and do a mission with us? So me and my wife talked about it. We did, and we yeah, we, we, we organized this mission with the church. We’ve got a team of people together precious friends of ours, or in each individually run their own ministry, their evangelistic ministry. We’ve got friends who are like like spiritual father and mother sort. They’re very much on identity. So we did a school of evangelism for three days with this church from like the fifth till the seventh April. We trained and equipped them in, in all areas of evangelism. We train and equip them about identity, you know, knowing who we are in Christ, that we have a, you know, an inheritance as sons and daughters. Cuz I, I’m really convinced that it’s so important when we do evangelism schools, that we teach on everything, like all the basics of Christian life, what it means to be a son and a daughter, and to walk in the authority and the power that God has given us.
(05:29):
You know, to, to raise the dad, to heal the sick, to cast out demons. And because in the western world, there’s quite a lot of people that, that find it difficult to like find, okay, well am I called to evangelize? You know, not, yes, you have evangelists that are there to equip the saints, but everybody is called to witness. Everybody is called to share Jesus on a daily basis for people. So this is what we taught in this school. We went out on the street every day. We had some stepping out for the very first time, sharing the gospel with a total stranger.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:02):
And how did people respond on the streets of Birmingham
Reggie van Dinter (06:06):
Very
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:06):
Openly? Did you get cussed at, did you get argued with or were people receptive?
Reggie van Dinter (06:11):
So we have people recept, so West Bromage, the town centers very multicultural. So there’s Hindus, there’s Muslims, there’s Buddhist, there’s atheist. There was even there was even one of the pastor and one of our team members had a chat with a guy who said he was an atheist, but also like followed all sorts of like satanic rituals and all this sort of stuff. And so yeah, a one’s belief, but I don’t anymore. So I think what, what we’ve seen on the streets is people receptive, people not receptive. We’ve seen people literally cursing at us like, what are you doing here? Just get the, be out. You know, when you, you don’t belong here and why don’t you come here preaching the gospel to us, you know, you’re preaching a dead God. No, we’re preaching a God. There’s a life because he does miracles. We’ve seen healings on the streets. We’ve seen people get healed from, from back pains, you know, neck pains, all of that on the street. It was absolutely incredible.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:07):
Wow. What a tremendous testimony to know that God is working not only here in Latin America, but also in Great Britain. Exactly. And in Europe, I I think it’s time for a great awakening come on in Europe and for God to pour out his Holy Spirit Yeah. Upon that continent. Definitely. just in month we’re going to be in Amsterdam and there’s going to be evangelists coming together from all over Europe and, and really all over the world for Amsterdam 2023. Yeah. And I believe that we’re going to, to see a, a spark that’s going to ignite a great revival across Europe. Yeah. And some people say that Europe is post-Christian, but I like to say it is pre-Christian. We’re ready to, it’s ready to see a great move of God in Europe. Yeah. And so tell me some about your, your business. I, I read on your website that you do social media, that you have expertise in the area of digital marketing and that type of thing. How do you integrate that into the ministry that God has called you to?
Reggie van Dinter (08:12):
So well the, the way how I, I integrated in the ministry that God has calling to, because, you know, because I’m an evangelist, I use social media at the shadow gospel. So my Facebook would be full of like, scriptures would be full of like live Facebook stuff over covid. My wife and I started doing worship and intercession evening. So we literally went online on our, on our Facebook page and just worshiped Jesus and give the opportunity for people to message in, to receive prayer. So we’ve did that for like two years in a row during the, the two years of Covid when we were in lockdown. And we’ve seen, we’ve, we’ve heard of testimonies of people getting healed and delivered during, during these worship and intercession stuff. And also we run online evangelism mission school. So we did that via Zoom. So it was absolutely incredible. We graduated 27 students, of which two of them went on to go to the Cfam Bootcamp. So who
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:08):
Was that that went to the bootcamp?
Reggie van Dinter (09:11):
Well, so so there’s a lady called Virginia. Okay. Another lady called Dubbo. Okay. they went to the boot camp, they did our online evangelism school. And they,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:22):
That’s wonderful. I, I get to teach at the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp every year and it keeps pushing out evangelists that are on fire and excited about taking Jesus to the world. And so I, I see that across the body of Christ, there are a whole new generation of evangelists which are being raised up. Yeah. That God is calling the church to evangelism. And I think that over the next decade, the goal of the church should be to reach every single person on earth with the gospel. That our generation could be the generation that fulfills the great Commission. And in order to do that, we need more evangelists in the body of Christ. And so, no, definitely. Thank you so much for helping to train and, and raise up evangelists. What are some of those key messages that you are trying to impart to those that you’re, you’re training to be evangelists?
Reggie van Dinter (10:19):
So one of the key messages is that, you know, it’s about knowing who we are in Christ and knowing that we are sons and daughters. And also one of the other key messages would be is, you know, it’s really important that we work on our character. Cuz you know, you can go out on the streets evangelize and stuff like that and, you know, be full on preaching the gospel and, but actually lacking a lot of character and Sally enough, there are people out there in the world that, that, that are great evangelists and very much the younger ones as well. But some, some of the times in some, some areas of their lives, they just lack kind of like mentorship and lack. We need more mentors. We need, we need more fathers and we need more mothers. So I think also one of the most important things that I would say is it’s important to be part of a local church.
(11:23):
You know, we can’t have lone Rangers running around and, and, and, and, and, and not having a base where they belong to. So I think one of the key messages as well is find a place where you belong, where you have people that care about you, that love you, that know what it is about, you know, that have gone through the, you know, through the misery, have gone through the, the tribulations of, you know, being in ministry and and also give it time cuz you know, sometimes God takes a bit of time for you to get ready to eventually be launched into, you know, into a full-time evangelistic ministry. Like, for example, me, I’m still working full-time. I’m not saying I’m there. I’m still learning. I have mentors, I have I, I’ve kind of like spiritual fathers a spiritual father, so my pastor is kind of like spiritual father to me.
(12:19):
Who, who really just gets what he’s a pastor, but he is evangelistic at heart. So he gets the, the, the, the drive to see people saved. And he, he, he very much invests in, in my life. We have, our ministry is part of an apostolic ministry called Freedom Fire Ministries. So the guys who are part of I told you earlier Andy Chairman Goland they run a ministry, they’re part of the apostolic network of global awakening, so they’re ordained on the Ren Clark. So they’ve been kind of like mans to us. They’ve been pass, sort of pastoring us on a, on a, on a regular basis. And they’re coming up to our first vision and implementation brunch that we’re having in July where we’re gonna introduce people to our ministry share you know, what we’ve been doing here over the last few years and all the plants and stuff. We’re not there yet. You know, we’re growing, you know, our ministry is growing. We’ve, we’ve only just come around the corner basically. But what I’ve learned from the years of ministry that I’ve already done is it’s so important to have spiritual fathers and mothers standing around all these young evangelists and raising them up, you know, mothering and fathering them to maturity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:34):
Amen. Yeah. Well, I think it’s wonderful what you’re, you’re doing to raise up evangelist and God has put it in your heart to be an evangelist and to raise up evangelists. And so I encourage you in that if someone wants to learn more about your ministry or be a part of what God is doing through your ministry, what is your website? What’s a good way for them to get in touch with you?
Reggie van Dinter (13:57):
So a good way to get in touch. So our website is ww dot www dot a r m sorry, ar ministries.co uk. So that’s our ministry website. Obviously you can find us on Facebook, arm International can find us obviously our personal Facebook den or Angela Vanden. And yeah, I mean we’re, we’re open to, to work with anyone that, that is hungry for Jesus and that wants to impact our communities. For us, it’s not just about the one-to-one evangelism for us, it’s about the long-term and the longevity of the impact in communities. So we, we would love to do like festivals like similar to Louis Palau. So we’re doing one in August in in Our Town. So we’re looking at that doing like a mini festival where we do like a week of evangelism
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:46):
In in the
Reggie van Dinter (14:47):
Uk Yeah, in the UK in Rochdale where we live. So Rochdale is sadly known, has been in the news a lot for like grooming, like, and stuff like that. So Asian people that will, Asian men that will groom young girls and all this sort of stuff. It’s been massively nationwide in the news. The town is known as the most deprived town in all of the uk so it’s in the top list of, of deprived towns. So God placed us there and to, to make an, you know, to bring an impact in the community and to, so, so, so we basically are actually, after we leave here for Columbia there’s a chance that we have a new house literally in the middle of, of the roughest estate of, of, of the town. Because, you know, we want to reach people and to reach, in order to reach people. We have decided that we want to live in an estate, in a rough estate to actually build relationship with the people in the estate to build long lasting relationships, get them saved, get them discipled and plant a church.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:44):
That’s awesome. Well, I believe it will be a great success and I think it’s wonderful that you’re reaching out to the uk. Yeah. May God give you a great harvest of soul in Jesus’ name.
Reggie van Dinter (15:56):
Thank you so
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:56):
Much. Well, brother Reggie, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. Yeah. It’s
Reggie van Dinter (16:00):
Been so lovely. Thank you.
