Joshua Freeman’s heart beats for missions. He lived in Haiti for three years, then he pastored a local church in Tulsa for a while. This year he launched his own ministry called Embark Global Ministries.

Josh’s ministry does community outreach with food distributions, street evangelism, partnering with other organizations for community events, and various types of kids’ ministry.

Questions for Josh:

What happened during your recent trip to the Dominican Republic?

What was it like to live in Haiti for three years?

What have you learned from Rod Baker and Terry Henshaw?

Website: https://embarkglobalministries.com/

Listen to the Evangelism Coach Daniel King on The Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Joshua Freeman’s heart beats for missions. He lived in Haiti for three years. Then he pastored a local church in Tulsa for a while. This year he launched his own ministry called Embark Global Ministries. Today, he talks about his passion for evangelism.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionary, 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 (00:52):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. They have a special guest with me, Joshua freemen. So

Joshua Freeman (01:03):
Wonderful to have you glad to be on this podcast with you today. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And so on this podcast, we talk about evangelism. We talk about people who have a heart for evangelism, and you have been involved in evangelism for many years now. Can you kind of tell me what got you started having a passion for evangelism? Yeah, actually I was 14 and I got invited to go on a mission trip. I never been on a mission trip before. And so one of my friends said that they were going to go and I said, well, I’ll try it. And sure enough they, we went on a mission trip to Mexico and as we went on that trip, I just begin to have this overwhelming desire to share the gospel with more and more people and just how real it became to me to help others find their life in Christ.

Joshua Freeman (01:53):
And so that really sparked a fire to continue to go share the gospel around the world. Where did you go in Mexico? Yeah, we went to Akuna Mexico just right off the border where we drove a bus for about 20 hours, but it was pretty awesome. Yeah. My parents were missionaries in Mexico for 20 years. We lived right across the border from El Paso, Texas, and NC that Juarez. We did lots of evangelism and what as we, we hosted dozens of groups every year. And I think we had a lot of groups from victory Christian center from here in Tulsa, Oklahoma come down and, and minister with us. Sometimes we’d take them out into the neighborhoods and do seven or eight services a day just going from neighborhood to neighborhood. And so we saw literally thousands and thousands of people give their lives to Jesus in Mexico.

Joshua Freeman (02:44):
And so you, you went on this first mission trip, you got a passion for evangelism passionate permissions. And then you went, you spent three years in the nation of Haiti. Tell me what you did while you were in Haiti. Yeah. So during our time in Haiti, we worked for victory compassion and we begin to build homes. We begin to build medical clinics. We also helped with school programs. We would go inside of the schools and we would evangelize there. We had over 20 schools allowing for us to come in and share the gospel each and every day of the week. And through that, we were able to feed those 20 schools. And also we started an IEPI there. And so we were able to begin to not only build homes, but begin to build relationships and feed and begin to minister the gospel on a daily basis.

Joshua Freeman (03:32):
Just this month, the president of Haiti was assassinated. And some of my friends who ministered there say that it’s been very difficult recently ministering in Haiti, just because of violence from different gangs. What was that like living in Haiti? Did you have to fight a lot of demons while you were there? You fought a lot of demons, for sure. You know I will say with the spiritual warfare, it was probably the toughest place. If you weren’t prayed up and ready, you know, you, you would feel the spiritual attack. There’s such a heaviness in Haiti because they’ve dedicated the island of voodoo. And so when you just go down the street, you might see a voodoo priests just out there, or you might walk into a place that you think is just safe in general, and there’s there being a sacrifice or something like that.

Joshua Freeman (04:22):
So it’s a very tough spot spiritually. So you have to really be ready. And then also with the violence, it actually has one of the largest ghettos in the world, citizen LA. And so the violence is extremely high, extremely dangerous. And so there might even be times where we wouldn’t leave the house for three days because of what they would call a manifestation. We call it a riot would happen to where they would block the streets, set fire to houses, to tires in the middle of the road. And you couldn’t go anywhere. So you, you know, when you’re in Haiti, it is a tough place to be, and it is hard and you have to continue to pray and be built up spiritually each and every day.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:03):
You have worked with Pastor Rod Baker, who he was the compassion outreach pastor at victory. And now he’s launched a church in Jenks and has a great feeding ministry there. And then you’re also working with Terry Henshaw who has a great ministry. He’s done all kinds of tremendous, uh, outreaches all over the United States and around the world. What are some of the things that you’ve learned working with pastor rod baker and pastor Terry Henshaw?

Joshua Freeman (05:36):
Yeah, I’ve been learning so much from both of them on a continual basis. First we’ll pass a ride. I personally asked him to teach me how to have more of a mercy gift and more of a generosity gift, because are two things that just ooze out of him, the gift of mercy, showing mercy in every situation and just being able to be so graceful with it and know he began to speak into my life just on how no matter what situation we walk into, we ought to show mercy and be able to be generous and loving to each and every person.

Joshua Freeman (06:08):
So those are some of the biggest takeaways I have because when you notice how Pastor Rod has built his ministry, you begin to see that, you know what, it’s from a place of compassion. It’s from a place of love. It’s a place of generosity because he has a saying that if God can get it through me, he’ll continue to get it to me. And you see that with his food ministry, that you know what something new will come in. And he’ll say, you know what? I have a friend who could use this truckload of rice in another place. And then the same thing works with Terry. Terry will get in a load of maybe it’s household goods or something else, or he does a disaster relief or a program somewhere where he begins to say, you know what? We need to make sure that we’re strategically blessing people in certain ways.

Joshua Freeman (06:50):
And so that’s what I’ve really began to learn is how to build connections. Relationships, operate in mercy and love towards everyone. So it’s really been a great time for me to be stretched and grown in so many ways because these men have been fighting the fight for years, showing love and compassion around the world. For several years, you pastored a church here in Tulsa, and one of the areas of Tulsa that needs a lot of outreach. What type of advice would you give to a pastor who wants to reach out to his campaign? Yeah, I would say first do it. Don’t hold back and go after every generation. So often we focus on maybe the older people in the church and, or the older people in the community. But I want to challenge you to go after every generation and then focus on your schools and the people in the area.

Joshua Freeman (07:47):
Because one of the things we focus on to the point where we were in all three schools in our community, almost on a daily basis, we went to the principals of schools. We went to the counselors, we begin to say, what needs do you have personally, whether it be they needed pencils, whether they be, they needed somebody just to sit in there for lunch, to talk to the kids. I want to tell you, don’t miss an opportunity to reach the kids. Don’t miss an opportunity to reach the teenagers or the adults because each and every one of those people, groups are so vitally important. So when you have the opportunity, don’t miss it. Take, take that bold step, even though it might be a little tough because you might be like, I don’t have enough time to do all these things, and it’s true.

Joshua Freeman (08:29):
Then you need to empower other people to help you and come alongside you. But you will definitely see the benefit and reap the harvest from doing it. Now this year, you have launched your own ministry, embark global ministries, and your ministry has a heart for evangelism, for training leaders for, for reaching out to the nations of the world. Tell me a little bit about what you hope to see God do through embark. Yes. Our long-term goal honestly, is to plant churches on every continent and to see those churches raised up by the leaders in those continents and begin to plant other churches. So our long-term goal is to just begin to disciple leaders, to make other leaders around the world, to the point where we begin to see the kingdom of God, BMA, manifested everywhere. And so our hope through, first of all, outreach, what that’s community base.

Joshua Freeman (09:24):
And then that’s global base is to make sure that we focus on reaching those right where they are. And even right here in Tulsa, reaching people locally. So we can make sure that they are being spiritually fed and then going around the world. And so that’s, the heart of embark is to continue to reach people each and every day, no matter where they are in their spiritual journey. And that’s what we continue to focus on and embark because every nation, the gospel is our, our main focus, sharing the gospel, every nation each and every time. Okay. Now this summer you took a team down to the Dominican Republic, and this is a very difficult time to minister because of COVID, but still you had good results down in the Dominican. Tell me some about what you did with the team and, and what type of ministry you did.

Joshua Freeman (10:15):
Yeah. So like you said, it was at the height of COVID in the Dominican Republic. With that being said, it changed a little bit of what we had planned, but God’s still opened up amazing doors. When we begin to go door to door sharing the gospel we actually had an amazing reception from people. People were actually grateful that someone had been coming to share the gospel. So every day we went door to door and then we also passed out food in the afternoon and we’ve been doing a feeding program for a number of years in the Dominican Republic where we’ll we’ll, we’ll buy like 50 bags of rice and our contact down there will help pass it out throughout the year. And so we continue to feed. And then we also had a crusade. We had a kids crusade and adults crusade, and we just did it all in the morning.

Joshua Freeman (11:02):
And so they came and we had dancers. We had some of the most popular characters, like Sonic, the hedgehog, all kinds of stuff. They came out and we even had other things like clowns. We had all kinds of great things to invite people out. And then we gave away for the adults, 50 sacks or rice, and then we gave away 20 bicycles. And so it was an amazing time. I’ll tell you personally, it was one of the most refreshing times because though so many other things were going on around us with COVID and all those things that God opened up doors for us to be able to minister to city officials. He opened up doors for us to just minister during such a crazy time right now. And so it’s been a huge, it was a huge blessing to be able to do that because I personally was kind of like, oh no, I would hate for us not to be able to share, but knowing how many people were so receptive was a huge blessing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:57):
Let’s talk about evangelism. Why do you think it is important for more people to be evangelistic? Why do you think evangelism is on God’s heart? What do you think God wants the church to do in the area of evangelism in the next a few years?

Joshua Freeman (12:14):
I’m glad you asked this question because this was on my heart. For the past few days, I love the saying that two thirds of God’s name is go. So G O God’s name is literally telling you to go. That means go into all the world, share the gospel. Don’t hesitate. Just go. So often we get afraid of going to the point where we, we stay stagnant and do nothing, but we’ve been, first of all, given the great commission. Second of all, the greatest thing we can do is go and tell people of his love. And so it’s going to take the church and that’s the body of Christ going to their neighbors, to their friends, being a light, not just physically anymore.

Joshua Freeman (12:54):
Cause a lot of people will, will be like, well, my life is going to be the example. It’s time for us. Not only to let our lives be the example, but our mouth begin to speak out God’s word and begin to allow for people to hear the love of God. Come out of your mouth. Hey, Jesus does love you. Hate Jesus cares about you because people haven’t heard that in so long from believers. Most, most believers have stayed quiet. And I believe in the next four or five, 10 years that as the body of Christ begins to rise up, we will see the next generations come to know Christ as well. Because as long as we stay silent, we are hindering their opportunity to hear about the goodness of God. And that’s not what we’re called to do. We’re called to be a light, not hide our light, but to continue to show it no matter where we are because Jesus, Hey, we all know John three 16, but I love John three 16 through 17.

Joshua Freeman (13:48):
It says for God, so loved the world that he gave. And then when you go to 17, it says he didn’t get, he didn’t do that to condemn the world. But through that, the whole world might be saved. He wanted to give an opportunity for people to come to know him. That’s the message that we have to share no matter where you are, no matter the social economic status, tell people the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and our promise you, it will benefit them and it will change your life forever. Amen. Amen. Well, let’s finish up today by praying for those who have a heart for evangelism. Can you pray a good holy spirit full of power prayer that God was sending more evangelists out to the harvest field, the world. Yeah. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this day. Lord, we just ask that right now.

Joshua Freeman (14:35):
You continue to empower your body of Christ, father God. They begin to rise up and father, God begin to go into all the world and preach the gospel no matter where they are, father God, that you will begin to let them know father God that they have been called for such a time as this, they have been by the guide. You will equip them each and every day. So Lord, I pray right now that you begin to speak father God, to their hearts, father, God, and you begin to aluminate their minds so that they can see, they can hear and they can move as you’ve called them to move low each and every day. Father, I pray that you do just like you did for Jeremiah. You touch their mouth father. So not they speak, but you speak through them each and every step of the way, father God, I pray that they are bold as lions each and every day.

Joshua Freeman (15:17):
Going after the loss, no matter what is said before them God that they will continue to be risen up father God and see the great commission come to fruition in their lifetime in Jesus’ mighty name. We pray. Amen. Amen. Josh, it’s wonderful to have you as a guest on the evangelism podcast. If someone wants to find out more information about your ministry or even to support you, what is your website? Yeah. Our website is embark global ministry.com. You can go there. All of our information, our PO box contact information is on there. So feel free to go check us out. Awesome. Well Josh, thank you so much. Thank you. I’m glad to be on here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:57):
Thanks for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I want to ask you to partner with me to help lead people to Jesus. For as little as a dollar a month, you can be responsible for helping us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Over our 20 years of ministry, we’ve found that it costs an average of about $1 for every person that we’re able to reach. And so if you could just go to king ministries.com and partner with us for at least $1, just $1 partner with us to help us lead people to Jesus. Imagine for a dollar you can be responsible for starting a party in heaven every single month. And would you do me a favor go to apple iTunes and leave this podcast a review. Your positive review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this show. Thanks so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (17:00):
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.