Finu Iype is the founder of Passion to Reach Ministries. He is impacting Canada and the world with the Gospel. Today he talks about why local churches need to have a paradigm shift in how they reach out to the lost.

Questions for Finu Iype:

You have had a huge impact on Canada and on other nations around the world. When you were 15 years old, you saw a vision of people falling into a lake of fire. Tell me about that vision and how it impacted your life.

How can a church develop missional thinking?

How did your ministry get started?

You have developed a Missional Church Blueprint that helps turn churches into missional churches. Talk about the three distinct phases of this process and tell me how this process helps churches.

The Greater Toronto Area is cosmopolitan and multi-cultural. There are many different religions and many different nations represented. How do you reach people for Jesus in this post-modern, post-Christian environment?

Books Mentioned:

Websites: 

https://thisisvillagechurch.com

https://www.passiontoreach.com

 

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Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
The new hype is the founder of passion to reach ministries. He is impacting Canada and the world with the gospel today, he talks about why local churches need to have a paradigm shift in how they reach out to the lost.

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, be 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 (00:51):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m very excited to have one of my good friends from Canada with me, the new EIT. Thank you so much for joining me on the evangelism podcast.

Finu Iype (01:04):
Daniel, I am so thrilled, super honored to be on the podcast with you. I’m so grateful for our friendship and for everything God’s doing through King ministries international and yeah, just love what you and Jessica all about and your family, and great to be great to be on the show today

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:26):
For new, you’ve had a tremendous impact on Canada helping the churches of Canada. And you’ve also done a lot of ministry in other nations around the world, but let’s start at the beginning. When you were 15 years old, you saw a vision of people falling into a Lake of fire. Can you tell me about that vision and how it impacted your life?

Finu Iype (01:47):
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, quick backstory, I grew up, my parents are originally from South India. I was born and raised in a little Island in the middle East called the kingdom of Bahrain. And my parents were believers. They were my mom was second generation. Her dad was a Brahmin Hindu who came to Jesus through a vision of Jesus actually. And then my dad was first-generation you know, evangelical, born again, baptized Christian. They were in previously Orthodox, nominal Christians back in India. So grew up in a Christian home and had the call of God on my life from when I was really young. Actually I think it was 10 years old when I had the first person that I can remember pray for me. And basically give me a prophetic word and say, God’s gonna use me around the, around the world to preach the gospel.

Finu Iype (02:39):
And there’s the last thing I wanted to do, Daniel. Honestly, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like, it was like, yes, I got this prophetic word. It was like, no, no, I don’t want to do this. It’s the last thing I want to do because you know, our context at the time was we were in the middle East and all these pastors and, and, and, you know, ministry leaders would come from India to raise money, you know, cause the middle East is obviously more prosperous and they would come to raise funds. So that was my context of what ministry was going to look like. And I don’t want anything to do with it. And then when I was about 12 or so 12 or 13, I had the skin condition on my face that broke out where literally all of my face. I mean, your audience can’t see me, but I, like I said, I’m from India.

Finu Iype (03:18):
So my skin is Brown, but my skin, my face Daniel looked sort of like your face. It was white. Like it just like we’re all over the skin on my face was peeling off. Went through a really rough time. You can imagine going to high school, a Brown kid with with white patches all over his face. And so yeah, went to the best doctors we could in in Bahrain at the time, went to the American mission hospital which was the best. And yeah, I mean the dermatologist there after two years of treatment said to me for new, I really don’t know what to do. Like I’ve tried everything. The only other option is to do a biopsy of your skin on your face, but that’s most likely going to leave a scar on your face for the rest of your life.

Finu Iype (04:01):
So you need to think about this. So I, I go home and I’m completely devastated, 15 years old, Daniel. And I’m like, God, I don’t, I don’t understand why, why do I have to go through this? None of my friends, even, you know, people that don’t know Jesus have don’t seemingly are not struggling with anything like this. So why, why me? You know what I’m so I’m praying and I’m just crying out to God one night. And all of a sudden I see this vision and I end the vision. It’s like hundreds of thousands of people are walking to the edge of a cliff. Like almost like zombies, you know, like they don’t know what’s really going on. They’re not connected to reality. They’re just sort of following the crowd kind of deal. And then they, when they get to the edge of the cliff, they’re actually going to fall over into this Lake of fire.

Finu Iype (04:45):
And until they get to the last row, they don’t realize that’s what’s going to happen at that point there, I could literally see their faces, the horrified look on their faces and, and they’re trying to pull back, but they can’t. And so they basically get pushed over the edge and I can hear their screams and I’m crying and I’m weeping. I am way I’m like somebody, this thing is so real. To me, it’s a vision, obviously it’s not real, but it’s, it’s so real that I’m like physically just weeping for these people that I’m saying, somebody tell them, this is literally what I say out loud. Somebody tell them somebody tell them. And then, you know, I’ve been a Christian for, you know, most of my life at that point, I give my life to Jesus when I was seven baptized when I was 12 being a, you know, a part of a church the whole time.

Finu Iype (05:29):
And I never thought about souls. Like I never thought about another person other than me, you know, we grew up in a very traditional Indian church where it was like we, you know, we would do like our pastors would wear white only for the most part. You know, the women in our churches would not wear any most of the most part, no makeup, no ornaments, no jewelry, nothing like that. Like it was very like traditional legalistic kind of. And so the concept, even though I don’t think I ever heard anyone say it out loud, you know, the underlying philosophy of what it meant to be a Christian was we are people that have made sacrifices and live differently from the world. So we’re going to go to heaven and the world’s going to go to hell and you need to stay away from the world.

Finu Iype (06:12):
That was the sort of thinking. And so never even thought about it. Wait a minute, we live in a Muslim nation. We live with Arabs all around us. Like these people need Jesus. Aye, aye, aye, aye. Half jokingly. But it’s true. Say, you know, we would, you know, any people we love to pray. Okay. Let’s sorta like the Africans in that sense, like we’re always praying. Like we had prayer meetings every day of the week. We had all night prayers, fasting prayers, 24 hour chain prayer meetings, right? Constant prayer. I don’t remember one prayer meeting ever. The, I lived there for 17 years that was called to pray for Bahrain, like pray for the people of this nation. So so I share that context to tell you that this vision is so out of the ordinary, I’ve never experienced anything like it. And for the first time in my life, I’m actually thinking about souls.

Finu Iype (06:57):
And, and that night, the Lord spoke to me, Daniel. And he said to me, your life belongs to me. C w when I was four from when I was 10 to that point, when I was 15, my mom would always remind me, but all these, you know, sort of prophetic words, like anyone with any kind of a prophetic gift that would come to our church would basically say, you know, you’re going to, you’re going to travel the world. You’re going to preach the gospel. Right. And I’d always say to my mom, I’ll never do it. I’ll never do it. I’d say my life belongs to me and I’m going to decide what I’m going to do with my life. So that night, you know, the Lord speaks to me and says, your life belongs to me. And I surrender my life. So if you asked me, when was the moment you surrender the rest of your life to preaching the gospel and doing what God’s called you to do? It would be that day, December 7th, 2000, I was 15 years old. And that was the moment.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:46):
Wow. And so you launched out into ministry share with me some of the history of your ministry and what you’ve done since that moment.

Finu Iype (07:58):
Yeah. I mean, that’s a, that’s a loaded question. It could be a pretty long answer, so I’ll try to keep it short. So anyways, I mean, I guess after the vision, I’m 15, you know, I, I started in my life to ministry. The Lord ends up. So I ended up going, not going back to the doctors or, you know, taking the medication cause it was all these side effects. And I said, if God really spoke to me that I’m going to trust him to heal me. So I know that this is really God’s plan for my life. So a year later a pastor comes to a home praise for some oil asked me to apply it on my face, just this regular cooking oil, not like, you know, olive oil from Israel or any, any of that fancy stuff, you know, just like zero cholesterol, canola oil kind of thing, you know, and he just prays for it.

Finu Iype (08:38):
And he’s like, you know, for new, I believe God’s going to heal you. And I just need you to put this in your face for a week and see what happens and sure enough, I was totally healed. And I went through like another, like very major healing experience. I don’t want to take time to talk about that right now. But so after that at the age of 17 through a series of what I can only say are like, you know, God opportunities and doors that opened up. I moved to Canada, Toronto to go to Bible college when I was 18. And and my heart was, you know, I want to preach the gospel because I had had multiple sort of words from the Lord that said I would go to Canada. This is before Canada was ever even part of the conversation.

Finu Iype (09:22):
You know, as far as going to a Bible college, in fact, it’s funny. One of the opportunities I had was at oral Roberts university in Tulsa, where you are cause we had someone related to our family that worked on staff there. And so they had reached out and said, Hey, you know, I know you want to go into ministry. You know, it’s already you and you know, something you’d consider it and I would have loved to, but when I prayed, I sense that, that wasn’t the direction in Canada was the direction. So the Lord has said to me from Canada, you’re going to go around the world. And so I got here at 18 and right away, I was like, I got to preach the gospel, you know, and I got to let people know and that kind of thing. And it was hard because a lot of the people I went to school with were, were not necessarily there yet.

Finu Iype (10:02):
They weren’t there. Like, let’s, let’s get a team together, let’s go out. And so I think it was when I was 19 or so I connected with a person that ended up being my mentor was a pastor at the time. I think it was in the sixties and being with the the POC would just basically the summits of God in Canada. And I said, you know what, for new, I, I really sense that the hand of the Lord is on you for evangelism. And I want to help set things up for you. So basically from when I was 19 Daniel, I would go into like all these rural towns. Right. So outside of the Toronto area, talk to pastors, like cold call them door knock. Right. And it was stopped. Like, you know, I’m a Brown kid from a country called battery that no one’s heard about with a name, like for new eyes that most people can’t pronounce until the fifth or sixth try.

Finu Iype (10:51):
And you know, I’m like, you know, I’m showed up to town saying, I want to be the evangelists for you guys. And I want to bring their lives, Georgia, also church and the Baptist church altogether, we rent out a ballroom in a hotel and preach the gospel, you know? And, and it’s, it’s hilarious. Cause I, I feel sad in some sense or sorry for the people that were in those initial meetings. Cause I don’t even think they could probably fully understand everything I would say because of my accent, you know, like, you know, in the Indian now in the Indians, have you ever come across somebody that grew up in India or grew up in an Indian family, we struggle with certain words and certain pronunciation. So the one that I always struggled with, which is sort of universal people, I guess from Indian background is V’s and W’s right.

Finu Iype (11:35):
So I keep saying the window is open, you know what I’m saying? And, and so John would always my mentor that’s like for new it’s window, not Bendo. So, so I’d constantly have to like be, be trained even in my speech. But you know, Daniel, when I think back to that, I haven’t even talked about this in long. So it’s refreshing going back to these memories. What stands out to me is passion. Like it didn’t, I mean, I wasn’t probably the best communicator bro. And I was, I was in second year of Bible college, like I was new to Canada. So probably there wasn’t a lot of cultural contextualization going on or any of that, but it was like, for me it was like I’d experienced something and I wanted other people to experience the same thing. Like I had experienced Jesus. I had experienced his power, his healing power.

Finu Iype (12:23):
I’d experienced that the presence of, of Jesus I’d experienced forgiveness of sins. I’d experienced the reality of, Hey, we’re going to a crisis eternity without faith in Jesus, you know, eternity away from God, eternity in hell. And I want people to know that there is an answer, there is a solution. His name is Jesus. And if you put your trust in him, not your works, but if you put your trust in him, he will save you and he will transform your life. And that was it. Like he was passionate, you know, like money, like, you know, I had met Daniel. I talk about this often that people complain about, Oh, you know what, no, one’s paying me a salary. I’m like, I didn’t go shopping. When I moved to Canada for the first, maybe four years, three or four years, like it was ridiculous. Okay. I was wearing the same stuff, all my initial suits case. So back in the day, I’m sorry to say this, but I wear a lot of suits and ties. Cause part of, you know, how we were trained in ministry, you know, you, you sort of dress,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:13):
You can’t be anointed unless you have the right suit on. And if you can embroider your logo on it even better,

Finu Iype (13:20):
I didn’t get that far. We didn’t, we raise that much money right. For the gold embroidery. But but yeah, my suits are all hand me downs. There was just, people would just say, Hey, if you know, I have this also that I want to give away, do you want it? And that’s my, so like, it didn’t matter. We didn’t have the, I didn’t have the funds to do it. And literally every meeting, it was like, God, I just pray that you would provide that the money will come in and the offering or a business person in that town would write a check for us or whatever. And I was making, I remember we were turning over probably dollars in the thousands and my salary a month at the time was $100. I mean, I lived with family. So that helped, I, I had some relatives in Toronto area at the time, but yeah, a hundred dollars.

Finu Iype (14:01):
I mean probably buy me coffee for the month, but that was it. So no shopping, no nos expenses, but, but the ministry was growing a lot faster because I was like, I just want to go preach the gospel. And yeah, man, that was, that was where I learned. That’s where I learned to figure it out and do it at 19 and 20 and small town, Ontario. You know, and just with pastors who were very generous. I mean, when I think back on these guys, bro, I am so grateful that they gave me a chance. Cause I just, I just think of being in that position now, like, wow, like they definitely either, either they heard from God or they just felt bad for me. They just couldn’t say no to this kid who really believed that God could use them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:43):
Well, thank God that he can use anybody. And you have grown a lot in the Lord since those days. And one of the things I really like about you is you are a strategic thinker. You like thinking about how churches can be effective at reaching people. You like helping churches, coaching churches. Talk to me some about how you help churches develop missional thinking.

Finu Iype (15:12):
Okay. So let me also share with you a little bit about the journey that got me there because initially I wasn’t thinking that way at all. So my model Daniel at passionate reach ministries was crusade evangelism, right? Which is obviously I’m not just familiar with it. You’re probably, you know one of the experts when it comes to crusade evangelism,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
I did my doctorate of ministry on a mass evangelism. So I’m probably one of the two or three experts.

Finu Iype (15:39):
I did not do a doctorate on that, but I mean, I just figured it out on the, on the go. And so initially the first about seven years of my ministry, 20 minutes, but when I was 22, about 27 was, you know, international evangelism and crusades. And we did about 20 nations around the world in that period of time. And and that was my heart and I loved it. I loved doing that. And, and you know, as you know, in Africa or India and South America there’s so much opportunity for this people actually respond to any event that happens in town. Cause they just curious, they want to know what’s going on, you know? And so it’s a great way to reach a lot of people. At one time one of the things I struggled with in those days was in that season of crusade, evangelism was the up like one of the, so we, you know, just like, I’m sure you do.

Finu Iype (16:32):
And most ministries that do mass crusades do we had we had a whole workbook, like we had a whole template and a whole crusade manual and training for followup and, you know, decision cards and, you know, timelines for churches and all of that was built into the crusade. And so we did our best. And when it came to due diligence with, with making sure these people that came up front and made a commitment and signed the card were followed up. But what I found was even with all of that prep work, that we did the culture of the church, wasn’t always the right culture to accept and embrace new people. And what I, what I sort of related to is it’s like an organ donation, right? When you have an organ donor and you’ve, if, you know, if you have a kidney given or whatever it is you generally need to take, I forget the exact terminology for it right now, but it’s like anti rejection drugs or something like that because your body basically rejects the organ.

Finu Iype (17:33):
Cause it says, it’s not part of this body. And so you have to take these drugs forever. So your body doesn’t do that. And that’s what it felt like. It was like, yeah, they had all the systems there, all the tools. But because this guy was the drunk in town and he just didn’t have a home and he didn’t dress. Right. And he didn’t talk. Right. And there’s, you know, half asleep or not there or whatever, it was good. He was just so radically different from that group of Christians in that church, even though they had all the systems, they weren’t embracing this person. And so that’s where the seed of this thinking started. It was like, I was like, God, I love this part of the ministry. I love the crusade part of it. I love calling people to faith, but I also care so deeply about what happens to them, you know?

Finu Iype (18:13):
And, and sometimes this is the trap that, and this is an evangelism podcast. So I can talk about this. This is a trap that us evangelists fall into. Right. Friends who will say to me, Oh yeah, I got 20 Muslim save last week. I’m like, wow, that’s phenomenal 20 month. Like that’s, I’ve never heard of that. I’m like, well, I’d love to talk to them. I’d love to talk to like how the, Oh, I don’t know where they are. Like what, what do you mean? Like what, Oh, you know what? I just, I just asked them, do you want to pray? And I just let them listen to the spread, give them a new Testament and said, just go read this. And I just left it. I didn’t get an information. I didn’t do any. That’s interesting. I’m not, I’m not knocking it. I’m not give me that Bible say that prayer doesn’t matter.

Finu Iype (18:54):
I mean, that’s a great thing to do. That’s a great word. But it’s like, is that really what it means to, to lead something, somebody into a relationship with Jesus, for saving faith to be formed in their heart. I, I questioned that, you know, and so that’s, that’s sort of where it started for me was like, okay, how do we, it helped churches think missionally that I exist. We exist as an organization to constantly incorporate new people into faith in Jesus and into the body of Christ and help them figure that out. So part of the transition process was about seven years ago. Now God was really speaking to me about Canada. And so when I was 17 Daniel, before I moved to Canada, I was praying one night and I had a vision. And then the vision I saw explosions of fire from the East coast to the West coast of Canada.

Finu Iype (19:46):
And the Lord said to me at that point at 17, never been to Canada, didn’t actually know much about, you know, globally people know more about the us than they know about Canada. They assume Canada is similar, but they don’t really know a lot of details about Canada. So I didn’t know much about Canada. And but the Lord said to me, you’re going to be a part of something that’s going to reach the nation. Like you’re going to reach Canada. And so that was my heart. And I felt I had landed, I think from Al crusade in Africa, came to Toronto to Pearson. And I was like, I’m looking around media and I’m thinking the same people. I’m pretty sure there are here. I don’t know if you know this, if your listeners know this, but Toronto is one of the most multicultural, diverse cities in North America, maybe even in the world.

Finu Iype (20:26):
Okay. So we’ve got people from every country. You can imagine living here and working here and, and raising their families here. And I was like, I’d love to do something about it, but my challenge was no one seemed to want any evangelists to come in, to do a three-day evangelistic revival. You know what I mean? I mean, it sounded so old school, none of the churches that I was connected to in the were wanting the greater Toronto area, we’re wanting to do something like that. So I was like, God, I don’t even know where I fit. I feel rejected as a, as a, as a person, as a Christian with an evangelistic gift, I feel rejected, but the organized sort of church structures. And so I had a conversation with at the time was my was my pastor, my church. And I said, I really want to test this out.

Finu Iype (21:10):
I feel like an evangelist can also be an equipper. And that conversation led to working with that church for a couple of years. And we saw tremendous growth. I mean, within the first six months, I think we had like 50, 50 salvations and 30 baptisms, you know, which was like, that’s what record breaking. I mean, the church was about 200 5,300 people at the time probably. And so, so that led to work. This could actually work. And so we started doing so I was doing at the time I was doing, you know, two weeks out doing crusades in different parts of the world. And then two weeks in working with the church as an equipper, helping them figure out how to reach their community. So after about about two years of that, where we at about a hundred ish, 120, 130 people come to fade 70, 75 baptisms, we said, okay this could actually be something that many churches can take advantage of and learn from.

Finu Iype (22:05):
And so I pass was asking me all the time for new, what are you doing? How is this happening at a local church, no crusade, no guest speaker coming in, nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary, just working within the culture of the church to change the way people think they changed the way leadership thinks and change the structure of the church to be missional. And so that led to about five years of consulting and coaching with churches on how to do that. So coming back to your question and I give that context to say it, wasn’t like, I just sat down in my office one day, I’d give up with this grand idea of how do you get your, just to be missional. It was more like in my, from my perspective, and this is probably different in the U S and definitely, I’m sure you different where you are Daniel in the Southern part of the U S but in Canada, crusades don’t work.

Finu Iype (22:52):
Partly because churches don’t want it. And partly because people just don’t respond to another event in town, I guess it’s not the thing. So if, from my perspective, the best way for me as an evangelist to function in my context and the Toronto area was to be an equipper of churches and to help people figure out how to reach their community. So the biggest shift I’ll start here and you can sort of ask me specific questions if you’d like to. But the biggest shift is looking at your church as a mission sending organization. So just the same concept, the same thing you would do, like a mission society for instance, would do in finding Christians that have a heart for a nation, equipping them, training them, teaching them language, teaching them culture, teaching them all of that, and then sending them on the field and giving them support a church needs to think that way, like one of the things I would say to churches all the time is your community.

Finu Iype (23:47):
Like literally the people that live in your community are not the same people, not none of the unique people that lived here when this church started 30 years ago, it’s literally a whole new crop of people. So you keep saying, Oh, we’ve evangelize the community. We’ve reached people. We’ve dropped off tracks at every door. I’m like, those were different people. You dropped off tracks too. I mean, it’s the same property, but different people. And in our context, like I said, because of the immigration, these are not, these are not even the same kind of people. There are different kinds of people that, that have different kinds of desires and needs and pain points and, and hopes. And it’s like, how do you speak to them? And the average church pro had no clue. Then they hadn’t even studied the community. They were in to know what are the needs of this community. And that’s one of the biggest challenges I faced was most churches want to do missions in their community based on what they like to do. And my point was, it doesn’t matter what you like to do in reaching people who look like

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:51):
Them and talk like them and that are comfortable with them. And so it was really takes a whole different paradigm of thinking to think the world is a mission field and right outside my door is a mission field. I need to think in a way that I can reach people.

Finu Iype (25:10):
And part of the challenges, see we celebrate what we celebrate is what grows Daniel, right? So we celebrate, Oh, we got another new family that moved in from this part of town or whatever. They don’t grow near the community, the great leaders they’ve got a great job. He’s a manager at a car dealership, or he’s a, you know, she’s a manager of a local hospital or something. And we celebrate that, right? So we communicate constantly. We want well to do, you know, put together families, you know, mom and dad, three little beautiful kids. You know, they’re going to jump on the board. She’s going to be the head of the Sunday school department. Like, this is what we want. We don’t want the guy that doesn’t look like us. Doesn’t eat what we eat. Doesn’t dress decent. Doesn’t have a job. He’s actually right now, you know, in between jobs and actually needs help from the church.

Finu Iype (25:59):
Like we don’t celebrate that. We don’t say, wow, we’ve got a family. You know, they’re in desperate need church. We’re gonna rally around them. We’re going to love them. It’s not what we talk about from the pulpit. We don’t talk about, we don’t celebrate in our annual reports. Sally, who is one of our church members now has built relationships with five families that are non-Christians. And she goes out with all of their kids to the park once a week for a kids activity. No one talks you don’t, you don’t even hear Sally’s name mentioned, right? Because that’s not what we’d celebrate. We celebrate the dollars. We celebrate, you know, new services. We celebrate the influential people we attract. And part of the thinking is we need to change the way, look at the scorecard in the North American church, right? It’s not just about those externals. It’s about what are your people doing to build authentic relationships with people that are far from Jesus in your community, find those stories. And in fact, if possible, find the stories that have not yet resulted in those people becoming Christians. Because when we constantly highlight only the stories where people become Christians, we are, you know not, not obviously, we’re not saying this, but we are communicating that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:26):
One that finished my man. Yeah. Only the finish line matters. You’re not celebrating the process.

Finu Iype (27:32):
When you asked me, what is missional thinking? How do you help to just figure this out? Is that you celebrate engagement? That’s what you celebrate. You celebrate people getting involved in people’s lives. People caring for their local school systems, people giving to their local charities. Don’t come up with your own. And this is the challenge we have, right? It’s like, it’s gotta be our charity. There’s an issue with the, with the, you know, the paint in our schools. Okay. Instead of just helping the local charity, that’s helping repaint all of our schools. We start the Christian assemblies of God or Christian, you know, community, church, painting service. And it’s like, because it’s like, if it’s not my thing, we don’t want to do it. It’s like no, send your people into local existing charities. So they can be part of the fabric of the community and start engaging in relationships with people that serve there and people that are served by them.

Finu Iype (28:23):
That’s the better strategy instead of taking on the administrative responsibility of creating all these new programs and new projects, which by the way, is why boards ended up saying to bleed pastors. Nope, we’re not doing another thing because it’s too much work. And I agree, but the point is find the people that are doing it. Daniel, I’ll give you this example. Like at one point we were doing this we were doing these events called cycle Fest. And it was basically like we would do this event where people in our community would run walk cycle to raise money for community causes. So let’s say a wing of our local hospital or whatever, but it wasn’t like just church people. It was just community people as well. Part of that, what we would do is we would help give away bikes to kids that couldn’t afford it.

Finu Iype (29:12):
And you know, I I’ll never forget this. I’ll never forget this moment. We connected with a bunch of charities and what these charities would do, Daniel, they would rent buses like big school buses. They would pack these buses with families in the community, send them over on their dime, you know, the, the organizations paying for it so that these kids would get training on. Cause they’ve never written a bike. So we would bring in bike instructors, train them, fit them to the right bike, get them a helmet and all that stuff. And, and I remember the church being full of people. Non-Christians lots of actually a lot of the Muslims sitting in our church, waiting for their kids to get fitted and trained on how to ride a bike. And I’m thinking I’ve done nothing. Literally that event at that point was completely zero cost for the church because all we did was we went out to people and said, Hey, we’re doing this for this community. Would you like to partner with us? And they brought the people to us. We didn’t even have to go looking for the people once they came to us, these people like, who are you over a church? Really? Wow. And the, we got to have amazing conversations, build relationships and, and brought, we literally saw people come to faith in Jesus because of those kinds of events.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:24):
So talk me through the process of how you would help a church say you have a church urban church, 200 people, you know, they’re, they’re doing normal church type things. How would you help that church to start thinking more strategically in how they’re reaching people?

Finu Iype (30:45):
Well, the first step is I would, you know, talk to the board and talk to the pastor, right? Here’s what I believe you can never duplicate or replicate what you don’t live. So one of my first questions when I go to a board meeting was when was the last time each of you shared your faith with someone that’s not a Christian and there’ll be a long pause. So I’d say we’re not going to start doing anything with the church, the organization, the people until we do something here. So to me, and I know that sounds like, Whoa, bro, Rick, seriously, how is that going to work? But I I’ve seen this time and time again, where I’ve deployed missional programs and structures and systems that would not take the, you know, going back to my analogy of the body rejecting it, it would not take, you know, why, because the leadership wasn’t ha wasn’t bought into it.

Finu Iype (31:36):
And the only way the leadership will be bought into it is when they actually begin to live it. So we would, we worked with a model that my friend, Kevin Harney in California, shoreline church came up with called. He wrote a book called organic outreach, and I really loved it. And part of his simple concept was hold the leadership of the church accountable to having gospel conversations once a month. And so that’s literally where we would start. If I was to work with the judge straight, that’s where it started. I’d say for the first three months or the first six months, I say to the pastor, I don’t even want you to people to know that we’re working on anything. I just want your board and your leaders of your departments to know that we’re working on it because we’re going to meet with them once or twice a month.

Finu Iype (32:19):
And again, going back to Kevin’s strategy. What I love about it is he doesn’t he doesn’t reward the finish line. He doesn’t reward in a system that you have to lead someone to faith in Jesus. That’s not the point. The point is, are you engaging? Did you go out with a friend at work and have a gospel conversation? Did you just share your faith? Did you share your testimony? Did you ask them questions to learn more about them? Like what steps are you taking to get to know unsaved people non-Christians in your community? Because here’s the thing. What I found is this. When, when leaders start to have friends and I want to use that word, very strong friends, not acquaintances, not, Oh, I know the guy down the street, no, no friends who are Muslims and Hindus and atheist that begins to change the way they look at the li their own leadership in their church, because it informs them to say, wow, that event is so exclusive, sounding like that sounds like my friend now, you know, I don’t know if he’s a Hindu, maybe his name is Krishna, or if he’s a Muslim, his name is Abdullah, or, you know, or maybe it’s Scott that grew up in a Presbyterian church and had a horrible experience.

Finu Iype (33:32):
It’s like, I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe any of this stuff is real. Whatever your friend’s name is, right? It’s like, what’s caught feel comfortable in this environment. And if not, and why are we doing this as a church, if it’s not going to help them. But here’s my point. If I did that without working with the leadership, first, what happens is the leader said, well, no, no, no. We’ve always done an event like this this way. And I’m like guys, but it won’t work. You won’t reach anyone doing it that way, obviously. Cause the results, you know, sort of prove it, but it’s hard to convince them until they have personal friendships and relationships with those people. So again, I know I’m giving you a lot of detail here, but I would say first step Daniel is. And I think if you’re an evangelistic person, that’s an equipment.

Finu Iype (34:13):
By the way, Daniel, one of my passions is, and I don’t even know how to do it. Maybe you can come up with a strategy for this cause you’re good with this kind of stuff. It’s like, I believe they are evangelist, evangelistically, gifted people, not full-time evangelists, professional evangelists, crusade, evangelists. I mean, I’m talking about just the gifting, the fivefold gifting of the evangelist. I believe that’s there in all of our churches. And it’s like, how do we recognize that gift and allow that person to be an equipper. So if you want it to be an equipper in your church and you’re listening to this podcast right now, my, my advice to you is forget about doing an outreach event. Forget about going out and creating a big splash in the community. Don’t even start there, start with the people on your leadership teams. Let’s get them talking and becoming friends with people that don’t know Jesus and then together. And this is the beauty of it is once they do that, Daniel, the events and the programs and the structure and the change comes from the inside out versus trying to create it from the outside in which is most of what most of us as evangelists trying to do is like we do this big event and we’re like, well, we hope the leadership follows up. We hope they change the way they do things. Well, unfortunately it just doesn’t seem to always work well that way

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:30):
Let’s talk about some of the changes, the recent changes in your ministry. You, you founded passion to reach and use that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:38):
To help churches across Canada. And, and now you are moving over to a position with the village church there in the greater Toronto area. And you want to reach out to skeptics, reach out to a post-Christian post-modern world. What are some of the new initiatives that you’re planning as you’re, you’re looking to plant churches that can reach people in the greater Toronto area?

Finu Iype (36:08):
Well, Daniel firstly, let me start off saying this, this, this literally happened in the middle of the pandemic. So I just started this position in September and unlike America, we were joking before we went live on the show that you know, America is obviously the land of the free and the home of the brave. We don’t have a lot of freedom right now in Canada. So we’re, we’re pretty much locked down in our homes. We haven’t met as churches now for months. So yeah, so a lot of what we’re doing now is just online and, and, you know, gathering people and connecting people. But yeah, the sort of the bigger, I guess, point to your question is village church and part of what what we’re doing here. And the reason for the transition is as much as I enjoyed helping churches with being on mission and figuring this out, the, the truth Daniel is it’s very hard to make this happen.

Finu Iype (37:03):
It’s very hard to take a church that has operated a certain way for 30 years of 40 years. That by the way, I want to be very careful that their methodologies were very effective and their communication was super relevant when they started. And maybe for the first 10 or 15 years that they started. It’s just that the world around them has changed so much that they’re not able to now connect. So helping them transition was a very difficult thing doing it. And the Lord in a very sort of supernatural divine way connected me with village church and village started 10 years ago with about 16 people. And now they have about seven sites with somewhere between eight to 10,000 people that call the village home. And and they’ve done a really good job reaching skeptics. And I think they’re about 1500 to 1800 baptisms in the last 10 years, which you know, which is amazing in Canada.

Finu Iype (38:04):
And just for context for your listeners in the, in America, you know, that’s not a big number. It’s not a big church, but in Canada, it’s like any church in the greater Toronto area, over 1000 people would be considered a mega church here. So so significant growth. And so I’m really excited to be part of the team and what we’re really focusing on is what does it look like to speak to people that are skeptics that say, I don’t believe in God, I’m done with you know, all of that. So right now I’m basically looking for a lead pastors in our Toronto area church planters that we can equip and and launch as soon as this pandemic is behind us and and start new churches. And to specifically answer your question pastor Mark Clark, who’s the senior pastor of the church has written a couple of books.

Finu Iype (38:57):
The first one was called the problem of God. It was a book for skeptics, 10 things that, you know, skeptics would say we have an issue with when it comes to God. So science was an issue. Jesus is an issue. The Bible is it’s authenticity is an issue. I think one of the chapters is on sex and the biblical idea of sexuality. So all of these things that people would say, I don’t really believe in Jesus. I want to be a Christian because of these reasons he sort of addressed them. And he just came up with a new book called the problem of Jesus, which basically talks about who is Jesus and did Jesus actually exist? Which a lot of people in our culture like, Oh, that’s a fable. And it’s like, no, there’s actually a extra biblical proof of the historical person of Jesus that lived you know, at the timeline of the Bible tells us he lived.

Finu Iype (39:45):
So you know, that’s part of how we do it is, is we use philosophy and we use science and we use poetry and we, we use just, you know human connection to talk about why the Bible is practical, why the Bible is real, why the Bible speaks the truth, why the gospel applies to us today. And and yeah, I mean, it’s obviously been super effective in in British Columbia which is on the West coast. And we’re really excited to see just planted right through this province. And I’m in Ontario right now. Yeah, over the next over the next few years,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:26):
I think you are on exactly the right path. I’ve been very concerned about this area of ministry for a while now, especially asking the question, how do we reach America with the gospel? Like you said, the traditional crusade evangelism has limited effectiveness here in the United States. I mean, it still works great in Ethiopia. People will walk three days to come to a service, but here in America, no one will walk three minutes to go anywhere. And so how do you reach them? And so I just finished writing a book called proof. God is real, and it’s an apologetics book looking at different ways that we can know that that God is real. And I want to reach skeptics. I noticed that on Twitter and on YouTube, there is a very active atheist community that is actively talking to people about atheism. One of the most popular YouTube guys is a, is a Canadian who does videos every week talking about why there is no God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:36):
And I said, you know, the church needs to be in that arena. And so in our ministry, we’re starting to look at how we can produce material and reach out to, to skeptics and, and, and talk to them. And I’ve even reached out and befriended some atheists here in my area to start talking to them, just to, to, to be able to answer the questions that they’re asking. And so I think you’re right on the right path, reaching skeptics, reaching this post-Christian post-modern world, the techniques in the methods that churches have used 30 years ago, aren’t going to work today. So I think you’re doing the right thing.

Finu Iype (42:16):
And can I also say this Daniel, that I, I also believe that the Holy spirit, like I see every church that I follow that is trying to reach people with the gospel in our context is relying more and more on understanding Holy spirit and how Holy spirit works and, and asking the Holy spirit to give them, to guide them in the process. I think the times where churches said, Oh, if we just have a great marketing strategy, you know, if we just have a great facility, you know, if we just have a great kids program, that’s the way to evangelize. And I think we’re seeing that that experiment is basically failed because yeah, you may create fans of your organization and your leadership and your preaching style and your decor and your whatever, you know design sense and all of that. So, meaning people like to be in your space and they don’t mind coming on a Sunday for an hour and being there and grabbing a coffee in your cafe after it, on the way out.

Finu Iype (43:25):
But it doesn’t really do a good job of making disciples. And so part of what I just want to encourage everyone is listen to what the Holy spirit is saying. You know, sometimes it’s not just the North American, you know, presentation that is going to do it. And this is where, and I say this, because you just mentioned, you know, it crusades work in Ethiopia. But I think what also, we need to look at in our model of what is working in, you know, in the nations of the world and places like Africa is the power of God. Like when people experience the power of God, when people experience the presence of the Holy spirit, I mean, I love apologetics and we just talked about apologetics, but I don’t necessarily believe I can convince somebody into the faith. I don’t believe I can just reason with them. And they basically say, you know what? You want the debate, I’m going to be a Christian and I’m going to live my life for Jesus. I don’t really think that we’re really hard to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:22):
Argue someone into the belief.

Finu Iype (44:25):
Yeah. I think it helps them to open their mind, to want to learn it does when you answer some of their sort top questions, it opens the heart to say, you know what? I should actually cause some of these things that I thought were true, obviously don’t seem as true anymore. So I need to learn more and it opens them up. So it has its place. But ultimately it is the gospel is the power of God to salvation and the presence of God that is released when you just communicate the simple truth of the gospel, you don’t need to be on a platform in Africa. You don’t need to be holding a microphone with a massive PA system. You could just literally be sitting with someone across the table at a coffee shop. Just literally sharing what the message of the gospel is. And the spirit of God is able to work in that moment and and transform transform the person’s heart. So I just say that I’d say a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting, a lot of prayer, a lot of reliance on the Holy spirit is what we need today to reach reach this culture that we live in.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (45:23):
Amen. For new, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s a great honor to have such a smart person, such a strong strategic thinker on the program. I really appreciate you. And, and the insights that that God has given you. And I believe God has amazing things coming in the years to come for you,

Finu Iype (45:47):
Daniel, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed, obviously getting to know you over the past few years and your ministry. You’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you for taking the initiative. You know, I guess, through the pandemic to create this podcast and encourage people. And yeah, if you’re listening right now, I just want to really encourage you connect with Daniel, his ministry get his books cause this guy knows what he’s talking about. And you know what I love about you, Daniel, as usual, you don’t just do it. You actually want to multiply your impact through your teaching, through your books, through the media stuff that you’re doing. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for being an encouragement and an inspiration for so many of us that want to see people come to faith in Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:29):
Thank you. Bless you. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And what we found is that as we go to different nations of the world, it takes us an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach with the gospel. And so some countries are more expensive. Some countries are a little bit less expensive, but on average, we’ve invested about $1 for every person we’re able to lead to Jesus. So today I’m asking you to go to my website, King ministries.com and give $1, $2, $5, become a monthly partner, help us to lead people to Jesus. Imagine you can start a party in heaven with just $1. Also go to Apple iTunes, leave us a review for the evangelism podcast with Daniel King. So lots of people can find this evangelism podcast. God bless you for more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our evangelistic

Evangelism Podcast Host (47:30):
Outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.