Merry Christmas from the Evangelism Podcast. On today’s episode we talk about the Christmas Wonderland. We were able to lead over 700 people to Jesus right here in Tulsa, OK. You will discover a great method for sharing the Gospel during the holiday season.
Check out the Christmas Wonderland webpage: https://thechristmaswonderland.com/
Learn more about Terry Henshaw and City Serve Oklahoma: https://www.cityserveok.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Merry Christmas from the Evangelism Podcast. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about Christmas wonderland and how we were able to lead over 700 people to Jesus right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You are going to discover a great method for sharing the gospel at Christmas time. Come on, let’s go and celebrate what Jesus is doing during the advent season.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:41):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. If you’re listening, I wanna make sure to remind you to subscribe to the Evangelism Podcast and take a moment to share it with other people. On today’s podcast, I want to tell you about an amazing outreach that we did this Christmas time. It was in conjunction with citys serve Oklahoma, which is led by Terry and Brenda Henshaw.
Terry Henshaw (01:40):
Hi, I’m Terry Henshaw with Christmas Wonderland. We just finished an incredible time here. Uh, over the last 18 days, we had asked Daniel King if he would train all of our ministry people, um, because we were having so many people come through that ministry area. He just did such an incredible job in training every person on how to lead people to Christ, how to, how to engage in conversation with families, and just did this incredible job. And so we’re so grateful to them. I mean, if you have an opportunity to invite Daniel to your church, to train your people in evangelism in outreach, I mean, you are missing an opportunity if you don’t do that. So I just wanna encourage you, we just, just finishing up the most incredible outreach here in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Christmas Wonderland with over 15,000 people in attendance. And so Daniel just did such an amazing job. I just want to encourage you to invite him. Thank you so much.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:39):
Now, many years ago, Terry and Brenda Henshaw were the missions directors at Victory Christian Center, my home church here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And they did a great job as missions directors raising up missionaries, sending them all over the world, and they were also setting up great gospel crusades for my pastor, pastor Billy Joe Daugherty. And he did lots of crusades all over the world. He was a great pastor and a great evangelist. So Terry and Brenda Henshaw, after they were missions directors, God gave them the vision to start a ministry called the 99. And this was a horror house type ministry where people would go through different rooms inside a tent. And the, the 99 was a way to, to show people the 99 different ways that young people typically are dying in today’s world. And so you’d go into one room and there would be a drunk driver who got into a car crash, and it was quite vivid.
(03:47):
There, there would be a crash car there, and they would have someone laying, uh, through the windshield with blood all over their face about ready to die. And then you’d go into another room and there would be a, a, a drug den with someone shooting, uh, heroin into their veins and overdosing that way. And then you’d go into another room and there’d be a, a scene with a person sitting in a chair and they would have a, a gun to their mouth. They’d be talking about suicide. And then as the scene came to an end, the lights would go down, you’d hear a gunshot really loud, and suddenly the audience would be sprayed with water, uh, and it felt like blood. And so then as you came out of all of these different rooms, you would come into a prayer room where people would actually pray with you to receive Jesus and say, if you died tonight, would you go to heaven?
(04:48):
So it was a great evangelistic outreach with this outreach, Terry Hinshaw and the 99, they led thousands and hundreds of thousands of people here in the United States to Jesus. Well, they’re looking for a way to reach out at Christmas time. And so God gave them the idea of doing a Christmas wonderland. And so this year they decided to do the Christmas wonderland here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And they invited me to come and volunteer to lead the prayer and ministry room. And so from December 1st to December 18th, every single night we were there at the Christmas wonderland in the prayer room talking to people about Jesus. And it was so amazing because at Christmas, Christmastime, people’s hearts are open to the gospel. You know, we had so many people come through the prayer room, and some of them were atheists, some of them were Jewish. We had Hindus, we had Buddhist come through.
(05:55):
And then of course, uh, a lot of people from here in the Bible Belt who have had some exposure to church and to the gospel. And we found that people were so open to hearing the Christmas story. And so what the, the ministry of Terry Hinshaw did, it’s called City Serve Oklahoma, they rented the entire second floor of the Promenade Mall. Now, a few years ago, the Promenade Mall was a, a really nice mall here in Tulsa, but a lot of the stores have shut down and now the entire second floor was empty. And so they went and they asked if they could use the Promenade Mall as a winter wonderland. And so they filled up the entire thing with Christmas lights, Christmas decorations, they had music, they had different experiences for the whole family. And so families were able to come in. They were able to go to Santa’s workshop and make yo-yos for the children to take home.
(06:55):
Uh, in another room, they wrapped Christmas presents. They had a Christmas tree maze, and they had Elsa and Anna and Ola characters from the Disney movie. And then they had a petting zoo. They had a reindeer barn. They had, uh, huge room full of model trains. Then of course, the kids could also meet Santa and Mrs. Claus and they could eat a Christmas cookie with hot chocolate. And so this was a, a really great Christmas experience and people lined up every single night for 18 nights in order to go through this event. It was amazing. People from all over the city heard about it and they decided to come and, and so they’re looking for a Christmas experience. Then of course, the most important room in the whole place was a living nativity scene where guests viewed a live enactment of Jesus laying in the manger.
(07:57):
And of course, Jesus is the reason for the season. And so it’s so cool because as people came into the nativity room, they saw Mary and Joseph there, and the kids, especially the little kids, they loved to come up and look at baby Jesus lying in the manger. They like to touch baby Jesus. And the Mary who was there began to tell her story as if it, she was really married. And so she was in her the first person saying, did you know I had to ride on a donkey for seven days to get here to Bethlehem? And let me tell you, it is not easy riding a donkey when you are pregnant. And then we got to Bethlehem and there were no hotel rooms available. And so my husband Joseph was freaking out. I was like, what are we gonna do? My wife’s about ready to give birth.
(08:48):
And this one guy volunteered and says, Hey, you can stay in my barn. And so we went to his stable and there was was a cow, there was a donkey, there was some sheep, and there were some goats. And we were there in the, the barn. And that’s where I gave birth to baby Jesus. And I didn’t have anywhere to put him. And so I grabbed one of the mans that the, the sheep used to, to eat hay out of. And I cleaned out all of their saliva and everything and, and, and all the hey. And I put baby Jesus and laid him in the manger. And the kids were so wrapped, uh, they paid wrapped attention as they listened to Mary tell this story. And then she told about how the shepherds came and how the wise men came. And, and so kids would come up and they would meet Jesus right there in the manger.
(09:38):
And then as people came out of the living nativity, that’s where my part came in with all of my prayer partners. And so we would greet them and say, come this right this way for your next activity. And we would escort them over to some tables where we would have some coloring sheets for the kids to color. And we’d get the kids seated down coloring. And then once the, the parents saw that their kids were okay, they would take a deep breath cuz they’d been running from place to place going to all these different Christmas activities. And so now they had a chance to relax, and then we offered to pray for them. And the, the question that we used was, what is the greatest miracle that you’re asking God for this Christmas time? And some parents started talking about how they needed health. You know, grandma’s sick with cancer.
(10:32):
We just got kicked out of our apartment, we needed a new apartment. Um, we needed a new car. And then some people would shrug their shoulders and say, we don’t really need anything. We’re, we’re doing just fine. And then some people would just say, we need peace on earth. Well, whatever they said, I told all our prayer partners to go ahead, take them by the hand and pray for them. And, and if they didn’t know what they needed, we just prayed a general Christmas blessing over their family. And then once we prayed for the family, we took the opportunity to talk to them about the gospel on the coloring sheets that the kids were coloring. There were three pictures, there was a cradle, there was a cross and there was a crown. And we used that outline of the cradle, the cross, and the crown to talk to the families about Jesus.
(11:31):
I would sit down with the kids and I would begin to explain the gospel to them, beginning with Jesus in the cradle, then moving to what Jesus accomplished for us at the cross. And then talking about how Jesus is now wearing a crown. I would tell the kids, Jesus became the king of the universe and he wants to be the king of your heart. Have you ever made Jesus the king of your heart? Could we pray together right now and ask Jesus to be the king of your heart? And the results that we saw were absolutely tremendous. We, over the 18 days that we were there, we saw over 733 people come to Jesus just absolutely amazing results. We were there for a total of 18 days. We had 72 hours of ministry. We trained over 250 people in evangelism. We had 4,188 interactions and prayers for people.
(12:44):
And then 733 people prayed wi with us for salvation. 23 people said that they got healed while our prayer partners were praying for them. And so it’s absolutely amazing to think that right here in America, 700 people would get saved through an outreach like that. I mean, that is revival. We see thousands of people get saved in our crusades overseas. But you know, the angels of heaven rejoiced just as much when someone gets saved right here in America. And I’m really encouraged by these results because I’ve been praying for revival in America. I’ve been asking God to show me different ways of reaching out here in America. In many countries we do the big crusades, big festivals, and thousands of people come. The challenge with doing a big crusade or festival here in America is that it’s much more expensive here than it is in Africa or in Haiti.
(13:42):
To do a crusade in Haiti, we could do a crusade and it would cost us maybe 50 cents or a dollar in advertising and renting the sound system and in order to put on the crusade. But here in America, you could do an event and it might take $50, $75 per person in order to get them to come to the event. And I think that’s one of the big challenges that a lot of big ministries have had here in the States, is they do a big event and then no one comes. Part of it is because, uh, people have moved more to online, uh, uh, uh, participation in events. And part of it is just a general apathy among churches in the United States to organize and to get the loss to come to events. And so you kind of have to look for creative ways of reaching people.
(14:36):
And and the last year I’ve really been praying and asking, I say, God, could you please give me a way of reaching out to people here in America? And so this last summer we did the Tulsa State Fair Outreach, and that was 11 days long. We set up a a booth at the Tulsa State Fair with a little platform. And we went out there, we prayed for people all day long. We had hundreds of volunteers who helped us with, uh, free prayer shirts. And from the outreach at the state fair, over 400 people gave their lives to Jesus. And now with this Christmas wonderland, we’ve seen over 700 people come to Jesus. And so I think that there really is a way that we can reach people here in the United States that might look different than what we do in Africa or what we do in Asia, but there is a creative way that we can reach people right here in the United States.
(15:32):
Now, I put together a training video for my prayer partners that I want to play for you. Uh, this can be found on our YouTube channel. And so just go to YouTube and type in, uh, evangelist Daniel King, king ministries and you’ll be able to find our, our YouTube channel. Uh, but I wanna play this for you so you can kind of hear about how we presented the gospel to each person who came to the, the table for prayer. And then this is a really great method for communicating the gospel during Christmas time using this outline of the cradle, the cross in the crown. You can use this, I give it to you. Go ahead, use this outline. And, and it’s a great way to talk to people about Jesus at Christmas time. So let’s go ahead and listen to the instruction on how to present the gospel at the Christmas wonderland. Here we go.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
This is our special Christmas wonderland coloring sheet. And this is going to give us the basic outline that we’re going to use in order to share the gospel. Now maybe you are very experienced at hearing the gospel, and that’s wonderful. Uh, maybe you’ve never had the opportunity to, to really share your faith with someone. Well, we’re gonna make this very easy for you. It’s not hard, it’s gonna be easy. And the outline that we’re going to use to share the gospel this Christmas time is the cradle, the cross, and the crown. These are three pictures from the life of Jesus that can become real in the life of the people that we’re talking to. So let me show you how I might use this outline to share the gospel. You know, we’re here celebrating Christmas time. 2000 years ago. Jesus, the son of God, was born as a baby in Bethlehem.
(17:43):
And that’s why we celebrate Christmas because 2000 years ago, Jesus was born at Christmas time. Now Jesus was the son of God and who came from heaven to earth to set us free from pain, suffering, and sin. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All, every single one of us have made mistakes. And the Bible says that the price for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ actually died on across to pay the price for our sins. The Bible says in John three 16, for God so love the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but would have everlasting life. Jesus was the greatest Christmas gift that was ever given. Now, Jesus died on the cross, but he didn’t stay dead.
(18:41):
After three days, Jesus rose from the dead. And now Jesus is the king of the universe. And he wants to be the king of your heart. Do you wanna make Jesus the king of your heart right now? If you want to make Jesus the king of your heart, I wanna lead you in a short prayer and I want you to repeat this prayer after me. And we are going to make Jesus the one who came at Christmas time 2000 years ago. He’s going to come and live in your heart. Let’s pray together. Just say this with me. Say, dear God in heaven, I cry out to Jesus. Jesus save me. I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins. Tonight I repent of everything and I give my life to Jesus. I believe Jesus rose from the death. And right now I invite Jesus to be the king of my heart.
(19:45):
Jesus name, I pray. Amen. So sharing the gospel really is very simple. We just used the cradle, the cross in the crown. Jesus was born 2000 years ago. That’s the reason we celebrate Christmas. Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for ars sin, but he didn’t stay dead. After three days, Jesus rose from the dead, and now he’s the king of the universe. And Jesus wants to be the king of your heart. That’s the basic outline. And you can just make it very simple. Just give each person the opportunity to pray, to accept Jesus, to be their Lord and Savior. And I encourage you to be bold and say, would you pray with me tonight? Would you like Christmas to be real for your family? And take them by the hand and lead them in the prayer. Tell the kids, say, Hey kids, save this prayer with me.
(20:44):
Let’s all pray together. Let’s make Jesus the king of our hearts. Now if you have more time and the family looks like they’re interesting, you can read more scriptures to them, you can expand upon this basic gospel outline. You know, there’s a three different scriptures that we put on the front of this page. There’s a whole outline of the story of Christmas here on the back. And you could go through that entire thing. You could even put in some of your own scriptures and your own ways of communicating the gospel. But I’d encourage you become proficient at just sharing this very basic, simple outline of the gospel, the cradle, the cross, and the crown. And if you’ll just use those as your outline, your three hooks that you’re gonna hang your whole message on that will make it really easy for you to remember and it will make it really easy for you to communicate.
(21:41):
Thank you so much for helping us to minister to these families that are coming here this Christmas time. You know, I believe that through this outreach we’re gonna see hundreds and even thousands of people give their life to Jesus. And the Bible says that all of heaven rejoices when one sinner repents. And so as you leave people to Jesus, I want you to celebrate together. Let’s celebrate all of these people whose lives are being changed by the power of Jesus Christ. Now that is really a reason to celebrate this Christmas time. So thank you for helping us to minister to all of these family. God bless you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:36):
So I would encourage you to use the cradle, the cross, and the crown as an outline to visualize the gospel as you present it to people. It’ll work from the youngest all the way up to the oldest. And it kind of gives you an idea of how to present the gospel. Now, one of the greatest fruits from this evangelistic event was the opportunity to train people in how to share their faith. We had lots of Bible school students from Victory College from Rhema, from Oral Roberts University. We had parents, we had homeschool groups, we had people that traveled from far, far away in order to come and participate in this outreach. And each one, we were able to train them in how to share their faith. And for many of them, they had never had the opportunity to tell someone about Jesus before or to actually lead someone to the Lord. And they were so excited. Uh, one, uh, young lady, she had tears in her eyes when she came to me and said, I just led someone to the Lord for the first time in my life. And there’s so much joy that comes when someone has that opportunity. And so I asked some of them for their testimonies. And the first testimony I would like to let you listen to is from a young student from Germany. Her name is Anna. Let’s listen to what she had to say about the experience.
Anna (24:12):
Hi, my name is Anna and I’m at the Christmas Wonderland. Right now I’m a victory college student and I’m actually from Germany and I’m right now here with Daniel King. And he taught us to pray for people how to pray for people and how to tell people the gospel. And actually when I came here, I, I was kind of excited, but the same time I was kind of afraid because there were so many kids and I, I thought I was not that good with kids, but I found out I’m actually pretty good with kids. And I had a lot of fun praying with the kids and tell me because the gospel. And we were able to provide so many families with, uh, presents and just tell so many kids about Jesus who never heard about Jesus or didn’t really know who Jesus is and what Christmas is really about. And yeah, I just had a really good time here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:54):
The next experience I want you to hear about is from a young man named Boen.
Boden (25:00):
Hi, my name is Boden and I’m a Victory College student. I, uh, we actually had the opportunity to come serve at the Christmas wonderland through our college. They, uh, gave us, uh, they told us about this opportunity and it was actually for, uh, could actually get a credit for, uh, assignment. So I thought, I’ll just try that. And I really didn’t know what to expect and I thought, eh, I, I really didn’t expect much even when I got here. But Danielle King taught us how to talk to people about Jesus here. But after I had stayed here, after I’d been here maybe about an hour or so, I really had noticed that I had become more comfortable with talking to people, which something I’m not usual, not usually a big fan of. So it’s definitely made me, um, more comfortable talking to people and definitely sharing the gospel cuz that’s not something I’ve really ever done before. So it’s just, um, actually make me, um, grow with some of my friends here at this. So I had a really good time too.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:54):
One more great testimony came from a young lady named Hannah. Let’s see what she has to say.
Hannah (26:00):
Hi, my name is Hannah. I’m here with Victory College here at the Christmas Wonderland. And I was able to, when I first came here, I had no experience in praying. This was my very first time to like actually pray with people about like Jesus and accept them into their hearts. And I first came here, Dan King made it very easy and very simple, and taught us how to pray with the kids and pray with the parents and just, just bless them all. And, um, one testimony that I have from tonight, um, this lady came up to me and she had just banged her hand. And so I was able to pray for healing over her hand. And I don’t know if it got healed or not, but I pray in Jesus name that it does. Thank you very much,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:42):
<laugh>. Ultimately, we rejoice in all the people whose lives were impacted by the gospel. Thank God for all the people who were saved. And also thank God for all the people that we got to pray for. You know, people face so many difficult conditions in their lives, so many different issues and problems that people are facing. But at the Christmas Wonder Line, we had the opportunity to meet them at the point of their need to ask them, what do you need? Then for those who needed Christmas presents, we were able to give Christmas presents to them. The ministry city Serve was also able to give furniture away to families that maybe needed a kitchen table or a couch in their house. And so it really had a real impact on people’s lives. One last testimonial came from Angie Hinshaw. She helped organize everything and let’s hear what she said about the impact of this amazing outreach.
Angi Henshaw (27:46):
Hi, my name is Angie Henshaw. I’m with Christmas Wonderland. We just wrapped our 18th night. We are so excited. Over 700 people gave their lives to Christ. It was a powerful night, uh, or this whole, uh, last 18 days. We’ve had a wonderful time loving on thousands of families from across the Oklahoma area. Um, I reached out to Daniel King through his wife Jessica, wonderful friend of mine, and just asked if he could help us in our ministry area, uh, to pray over families, love on families, and connect them to faith-based churches all across the city that could connect them to a wonderful community. They of course, said yes, we’re in, and here we are, December 18th, with over 700 people that have accepted Christ. So it’s been a wonderful event. We are so excited for all the souls that have now come into the kingdom, and we’re so grateful for the King family for joining us on this powerful, powerful event. Thank you guys.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:44):
As you listen to this episode of The Evangelism Podcast today, I really hope that the Holy Spirit is inspiring creative ideas in you to reach people for Jesus. You know, there’s many different methods that are effective for bringing people to Jesus. There’s not one method that’s right, and all the other methods are wrong, but if God can use Santa Claus and a lot of decorations for Christmas to bring someone to him, then I think all of the heavens rejoice when someone gets saved. And so I’d encourage you to kind of use this episode to think about creative ways that you can share the gospel. How can you reach out to people? What are some different seasons throughout the year where people’s hearts would be open to having an outreach where you could inspire churches to get involved in an outreach? You know, there is a way for you to lead more people to Jesus.
(29:45):
And I pray that the Holy Spirit would show you exactly the right way to fit your circumstances in your situation. Let me pray for you. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for my friend who’s listening right now. I pray that you would inspire them to lead many people to you, that you would use them to bring many into the kingdom of God. In Jesus’ name, amen. Recently I launched an online training course to help people to learn more about evangelism. And so I’m gonna play, uh, short advertisement for that training school. And if you want to be trained more and how to reach people for the gospel, then maybe this evangelism training school is for you. Let’s listen.
School of Evangelism (30:31):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you wanna lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from an observing top evangelists noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an ultra call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you wanna be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:33):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (32:53):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
