Pat Kendall uses Evangelism Explosion, the material written by Dr. James Kennedy, to lead a local church evangelism group. Today we discuss how to ignite an Evangelism Explosion in your church.
Outline of the Gospel from Dr. James Kennedy:
A. Grace
- Heaven is a free gift
- It is not earned or deserved.
B. Man
- Is a sinner
- Cannot save himself.
C. God
- Is merciful – therefore He doesn’t want to punish us.
- Is just – therefore He must punish sin.
D. Christ
- Who He is – the infinite God-Man
- What He did – He died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins and to purchase a place for us, which He offers as a gift.
E. Faith
- What it is not – mere intellectual assent or mere temporal faith.
- What it is – trusting in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life.
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Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Pat Kendall uses evangelism explosion. The material written by Dr. James Kennedy to lead a local church evangelism group. Today, we discuss how to ignite an evangelism explosion in yours.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:15):
Church. Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be say, 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. Welcome to the
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:52):
Evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a special guest Pat Kendall uses evangelism explosion, the material that was written by Dr. James Kennedy to lead a local church evangelism group. And he’s done that for many years. And so today we’re going to discuss how to ignite an evangelism explosion in your church, brother, Pat, thank you so much for being with me. Well, glad to be here, Daniel. Thank you. Well, let’s start out with how you got saved. What, what happened to lead you to Jesus? Well,
Pat Kendall (01:31):
My life kind of fell apart. Things happened and I was kind of all by myself. I went from a wife, two children and my dog to just me and my dog in a period of about three or four weeks and life just kind of came to a halt. A lady next door took me to church and I sat through a, what it was, was a Pentecostal tent revival. And at the age of 42, I walked forward when the gentlemen, the pastor said, you know, anybody that wants to know Jesus more, more, better come forward. And so I went forward and just gave up. It was very odd that day. I didn’t pray. I just raised my hands with tears, flowing down my cheeks and the tears quit. And just grace came over me. I felt him inner me and my body changed. My physical nature, changed.
Pat Kendall (02:20):
My spirit changed. And when I turned and walked away from that altar, I was a different person. And reflecting back on it shortly after that, I I said, Lord, I said, you know, I didn’t pray when I was up there that day. And I didn’t hear it audibly, but I heard him say with a smile. Well, you know, it’s okay with me, but if you need to pray, why don’t you go to go ahead and that’d be just fine. And so so that was, that was my experience in that tent meeting Jesus. And in the 42 years of my life, I had had visitation at my house. I’d lived in the same house for about 25, 30 years at that time. And many times during that period of time, churches had combined knocked on the door and said, Hey, why don’t you come to church Sunday? It’d be wonderful to see you at church Sunday, but nobody ever shared the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ with me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:11):
So how did you first get exposed to evangelism explosion?
Pat Kendall (03:16):
Well, about a year and a half after that, I a gentleman and I were talking about churches and some things at that church were changing and I was kind of looking and he said, well, Hey, why don’t you come by our church and see what we do? And so I went to his church, which is Bible church here in Tulsa and was there all, probably six, eight months and talk to a gentleman, my mentor and he Bob Nichols and Bob said, well, you know, he said, we do a little deal. He said, I think he might be real interested in. And so he invited me into the evangelism explosion program that they had there at their church. And I was in it all about two and a half years in that church and became a trainer and just did a lot of work with them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:01):
So evangelism explosion was written by Dr. James Kennedy, great pastor has a great evangelistic heart. And he put together this method for training people to share their faith. Could you share with our listeners how the program works and, and how it’s set up? Well, you know,
Pat Kendall (04:20):
Just a little bit more history on it in the sixties, Dr. Kennedy went to an evangelism conference and was invited there to speak on evangelism. And so he did his presentation and after one of the days of the conference, he and the pastor that church went out, knocking on doors. And when the pastor knocked on the door and he told James Kennedy just step up and you just answer, you know, when the gentleman answers and he said, I didn’t know what to say. He said, I had taught, I had spoken of it, but I didn’t know what to do. And he said to himself, he said, if I don’t know what to do, I know my congregation doesn’t know what, there’s no hope that they know what no, no. If I can’t teach, you know, if I’ve taught it from the pulpit. And so what he did was then he developed evangelism explosion in the mid sixties as a hands-on one-on-one knock on the door ministry well, really not knock on a door, but anywhere you are in life, then you are able to guide a conversation into the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:14):
So you were trained in how to use evangelism explosion, and then you began to be involved in it, but you didn’t stop there. You also trained others. So share with me some of the testimonies of what you’ve seen God do through this program.
Pat Kendall (05:31):
Well, the best testimony, and we really need to get back a little bit more about ESL, but the neatest thing was a lady from another church called me after I had left that previous church I mentioned and was at victory Christian center here in Tulsa and a lady called me and said, I hear you have an evangelism program over there. And I said, yes, we do. And she said, well, would, would you, do you think I would be able to do that? This is a lady I’ve never met. She sounds a little bit shy and timid on the phone. She’s a little reserved. And she said, you know, do you think I could do that? And the answer was one word. The answer is yes. And with the history I knew of it, that anybody when they’re trained and when they get comfortable, they can share the gospel with anybody.
Pat Kendall (06:15):
And so Diane came over and joined the program and she kept track over a period of years with us, how many she had led to the Lord. And one day she said, the Lord told me just to quit keeping numbers. And it was about 225. If I remember right, that she had personally led to the Lord, the power of the program is that is personally led to the Lord. You don’t have to stand in a pulpit. You’re on the street, you’re knocking on doors, wherever you may be. And so then later I asked Diane, I said, Diane, if you had kept counting, this is a couple of years later, how many would you say that you have? She said, Pat, it would be over 400. Can you imagine the power of the church? If everybody in the church had 400 converse, converts walking beside them, behind them going through and coming into the kingdom. And, but yet Dave Kennedy said at the time this was in they, Oh, mid nineties. The percentage of people who had ever personally led somebody to the Lord that is a Christian and those, they should share evangelical Christian that knows they should share the gospel. So people will get saved. They said less than 5% have actually done a personal conversation with somebody and led them to the Lord.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:25):
And that’s what Jesus told us all to do in Mark 16, 15, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. It’s not just a command for pastors and evangelists. It’s words written to every single believer. And so I think everyone has this, this understanding, or this desire to want to be able to share their faith, but often people don’t know how to do it. And so what this does is it, it kind of gives you a roadmap of how to, to share your faith. So, so tell me how it would work. You would take people, you train them in, in a group, then you’d take them out, going door to door. How would you train someone to use evangelism?
Pat Kendall (08:06):
Well, if I may speak to something you just said, the scripture says to go into all the world, and that is what we hear preach so often is go into the world, go into the world, go, go, go. And it’s a go ministry, many people, as you said, they’re not prepared. They don’t understand. They don’t quite know what to say or do when they get there. So evangelism explosion starts with the comm ministry and Jesus said, very simply come. And I will make you fishers of men. That was his first command. I don’t think that was an info in the invitation. I truly believe Daniel, that that was a directive. I think he said, come and I will make you fishers of men. I think it was a directive to the fishermen. And they walked away knowing that they were going to something to learn something, to be able to do something that over the next three years, Jesus taught them to do. And evangelism explosion is a very, is very simply AECOM ministry com and we will be taught how now then remind me of the question you answered, asked me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:04):
So before you go, you have to come and be taught how to be a fisherman. So tell me, how do you train someone to, to share their faiths? Assume you have someone who is shy, never had an opportunity to lead someone to Jesus before, but that they have that desire to, to be able to do that. How would you train that person to, to share their faith?
Pat Kendall (09:27):
Well, you know, that’s the great problem we have is we train everybody exactly the same. Whether they be the shy person, you just mentioned Diane or the bold person that just wants to just tell everybody, but just shakes doors and just rumbles things and just people run from them. And so what we do very simply Daniel is we invite them. We tell them, we give them a little overview of what we do, and if they are interested, we have to get their interests. First. If they’re not interested, you can’t, you can’t bring them into something they don’t really want to do. But those that are interested that really catch the comment. I will teach you message that we bring them in and over a period of Oh, it was 13 weeks. They’ve shortened it now to a lesser program, but we did 13 weeks.
Pat Kendall (10:08):
And over the period of that 13 weeks, we go out in groups of three, we have two men and a woman or two women and a man. We always have a mixed group. We never go out with a man and a woman. And we don’t go out with two men or two women because we don’t have the ability to speak to everybody. But when you have a mixed couple or a mixed group, we can speak to anybody that comes to the door or we happen to cross. And so we invite them in, we group them up. And in the first week, two, three, four, the trainer, the one, the leader of the group is completely in charge and the others are just Watchers. As we go along, they’re learning a presentation of the gospel. We have an outline that we learn. We get to a little bit, but as we go, they start learning the presentation.
Pat Kendall (10:53):
The simplicity of a presentation is it’s somewhat lengthy, but, but not it’s so, so wonderful. And over a period of time in the middle, then they start taking part of the presentation, part of the leadership. And by the end of the time, they are the leader and the leader is now the follower. He’s there just in support and prayer. And we see these people as they certify, so to speak as they are qualified, as they get comfortable like Diane, then they are able not only on IE night or EDA who want to go out as the group, but when they’re out in the world on their own, to be able to share the gospel in a very simple explanation of how they can be saved and know for certain that they have eternal life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:40):
Since you started doing this, how many people would you say that you’ve trained in, in sharing their faith
Pat Kendall (11:47):
In about, I think 15, 16 years at victory that I was involved in and became the leader of the program with my, we have certified 150 evangelists. And now this is not the five fold ministry evangelists. This is the evangelism that the church, the congregation should be doing a congregational evangelism. That means we can send hundreds, thousands out on the streets every week where an evangelist will drop into a church on occasion and the 150 that we train. They, they have a certificate of completion of the course, but then they also have a certificate in their heart that they’re able to share. And over that period of time, too, and just about an hour and a half a week about, Oh, I’m thinking probably 20 weeks a year, we led over 1500 to the Lord.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:37):
Wow. That’s amazing. And would you say that everyone who goes through the program is able to lead someone to Jesus by the time they finish?
Pat Kendall (12:46):
There’s no problem there. No doubt about that. I mean, that is, that is a fact what you just said by the time we finished the program, we know how to instigate a conversation, lead that conversation to a gospel of where they’ve come from, where they are in their life and just present the gospel to them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:05):
You mentioned that Dr. Kennedy has a basic outline for sharing the good news. And so let’s just talk a little bit about what that outline would, would look like. And so here in the, the evangelism explosion book, there’s in chapter three, there’s an abbreviated outline of the gospel presentation. You have the, the introduction, you, you would talk about the someones secular life, their church background, and then maybe about your church, you would share your testimony. Then you come to two diagnostic questions. And so talk me through how you would use these, these diagnostic questions. One, the first question is have you come to a place in your spiritual life where, you know, for certain that if you were to die today, you would go to heaven or is that something you would say you’re still working on? And then the second one, suppose that you were to die today and stand before God. And he were to say to you, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say?
Pat Kendall (14:07):
Well, again, let me back up just a moment from there. You mentioned that enter the introduction when you knock on a door or when you greet somebody for the first time you’ve never met in your life, it would just start a conversation with them about who they are, where they’ve been, what they do in their life, where they work, what their family’s like, where they’re from. You know, you’ve been in this city for a long time. We just talk, we, we become friends. We get a relationship started. If you’re in a home, you’ll see by the pictures on the wall or the trophies or the bowling ball trophy or whatever, or their kids or family pictures, you’ll see who their family and what they believe or mean. What they’re interested in in their life gives you a lot of inclination of what to speak on.
Pat Kendall (14:49):
And then we asked them about church background. And what we do then is we find out just a little bit about what their knowledge is, where they’ve been. If they’ve been in a Christian Church or a, or any church or synagogue or whatever they have been in their life gives you a little bit of information about them. And then we tell them about our church and what we believe. And then the testimony that we give is either a personal testimony. If they’re, if they have a good church background, they’re used to testimonies, they understand testimonies. If they don’t have a church background, then a lot of the things that we will speak of is what our church believes that our church believes that that relationship with the Lord is a good thing. We talk about it, but we try to skirt three or four words. We try to skirt the word, Christian, born again, baptized
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:49):
Because that’s not really what you’re trying to accomplish at that moment. And in like born again, that’s kind of a specialized word. You have to have some, some understanding, well, this situation where you get to talking about born again,
Pat Kendall (16:02):
Exactly Daniel. And the thing is, is Christian is misdefined by so many people. Sure. Born again is misdefined saved.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:09):
Some people think they’re Christian, if they’re, they were baptized as a child or something,
Pat Kendall (16:16):
Or because their parents are Christians, or because they went to church when they were a kid or they go to church now. And so what that does is that leads us from their second life, their church, our church, what we believe a testimony about what we believe. And then the diagnostic questions. What you said is have you come to the place in your spiritual life? We know for certain that if you died today, you’d go to heaven. Or is that something you’re still working on early in? He, he, they didn’t have, or is that something you’re still working on, on there? And it stopped the conversation because they had to give a yes or no answer. And many people didn’t want to say no,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:49):
No. And weren’t sure they just say yes, but if you say, is that something you’re working on, everyone’s working on their spirit. Yeah.
Pat Kendall (16:57):
It’s amazing how many Christians would say, yeah, I guess I’m still working on that. And how many people that aren’t saved yet would say exactly the same thing. Yeah. I guess I’m still, and so it continued a conversation that previously has stopped. And then, you know, men, I mentioned to you Daniel, about how we’re at the door in the first week out that the two people that go with us, they don’t even speak. They just mentioned, you know, they nod their head. They’re in agreement. If there’s something funny, they may laugh with us. And, but the one thing that they do do is at this point in time, is I turn to, let’s say a gentlemen named Fred. And I said, Fred, are you certain that you’re going to have when you die? His simple answer is a one-word testimony and that’s yes, that’s all he gets to say.
Pat Kendall (17:38):
And the neat thing is, is that gives confirmation, not just that the speaker, you know, the one that’s talking to him, but there’s somebody else there that has done the same thing that we’re going to lead them to. They don’t that yet, but we’re in agreement and something within our group. And so that leads us to the second question. That suppose you were to die today and stood before God. And he would to say to you, why should I let you into my heaven? And what I always do is I always put their name in that. If I’m talking to Sally, I said, well, Sally, if God would say, why should I let Sally, Sally, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? Or what would you tell him? So in the first question we understand the yes or no are working on it is what they think is going to happen when they die. And the second question is, is what they’re trusting in is if you would die, hoping nothing would come up on you. But if you would and stood before God, and he said, Sally, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? So now you’re going to tell him what you’re trusting in to get.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:42):
So what are some of the responses that you’ve heard in response?
Pat Kendall (18:46):
I think the funniest one was this one gentleman thought he was so good. He said, God will let me. And he said, I haven’t even stepped on a bug. He said, I don’t even, I let them live too. I’m just, he said, I’m just that good. A lot of people will say, because I have gone to church because I, I don’t, I’ve never murdered anybody. As far as I know, the 10 commandments. I don’t think I’ve ever broken one of those, you know, they give really not as bad as Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. And, and there’s really only two, two answers that are simple. It’s either I’m good enough to get in. Or he was good enough to let me in, in what he did. It’s either Jesus or me, that’s what we have to trust in.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:24):
So then how would you transition to starting to share the gospel and talking about grace and in the need for goals?
Pat Kendall (19:33):
The one thing I didn’t mention is we always ask permission to proceed. We say, may I ask you a question? If they say no, then if we ask them a question, we’ve offended them. Sure. So we always ask permission to continue. So before the first question is, may I ask you a question and what, before I continue, do you mind if I asked another question and now we’ve gotten their permission to proceed?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:56):
So, so you, you start by just knocking on someone’s door and, and some people are going to come to the door. Sometimes they’re busy. Do, do you make an appointment to meet them later? If they’re busy, how do you handle that? Or, or do you just go onto the next door
Pat Kendall (20:12):
From victory? We just went out knocking on doors. And when people come to the door, they, they will kind of show you whether they’re in her. You’re not just the way they open the door sometimes. But what we say is, hi, I’m Pat. This is Daniel and Sue and Sally. And we’re out from victory Christian center tonight, just speaking with people in the neighborhood and just seeing how people are doing, if there’s anything we might be able to pray with. And so we just gently open it, but we always say we’re from the church. We’re from what our names are. And a little bit about why we’re out there if they time. And that’s a
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:48):
Very soft opening. I mean, we’re just out here praying for people. Is there anything you need prayer for that gives you a chance to start the conversation.
Pat Kendall (20:55):
And we don’t ask them that at the very first it was there anything we can pray for because the answer is so often no, and those are the ones we need to share the gospel too, for sure. The ones that are asking for prayer, they may know they have a need. They may know they need Jesus and haven’t done. There’s so many, but to ask them to do something initially like that, other than may I ask you a question, it gives them the opportunity, or it gives Satan the opportunity to jump in the middle of the conversation and give you a note it to cut it off. Yeah. Okay.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:26):
All right. So then you ask, are you, can I ask you a question? You, and you, you begin to ask these, these diagnostic questions and that kind of lets you know where they are spiritually.
Pat Kendall (21:35):
You said transition. It just came to mind. The transition that we use is I know that I have come to the point in my spiritual life that I know for certain, I’m going to heaven. May I share with you how I’ve come to that knowledge again? May I share with you? If they say no, it pretty well stops the conversation at that point in time, but it stops at gently on their side. And we say, is there anything we can pray about? Is there anything you need anything we can do? And we keep that conversation going, because that way we got the opportunity to knock on the door again the next time. And if they, if they say yes, please do. Then that’s where we share the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:18):
Okay. So let’s talk about the presentation of the gospel, that the outline kind of goes like this. You start with grace and you talk about how heaven is a free gift. It’s not earned or deserved. Then you go to man or humankind that we are sinners, that we can’t save ourselves. Then you talk about God that God is merciful, that he doesn’t want to punish us.
Pat Kendall (22:39):
Let me interject right there. Previously, when the gods section of the presentation came up, they would say, God is just, and therefore must punish sin. That stopped the conversation because we told them that God was going to punish their sin before they, we told them that he was merciful and in the middle of, Oh, over the last 15 years or so, they have done different things. 20, 30 years really. They have changed the outline presentation to where it kept itself going. It didn’t have stop signs in it. And they moved in that particular section. They said, God is merciful first and doesn’t want to punish, but then he is just in must punish. And so they got the softness of the gospel before they got the harsh.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:23):
I think that’s important in this day and age, because in Romans it says that it is the goodness of God that draws men to repentance. And sometimes when people think about the evangelists, they imagine someone out on a street corner with a megaphone yelling and saying, you’re sinners. You’re all going to hell. You’re going to die. And really that is, that is only the, the, just part of the gospel to tell people that they’re sinners and the trouble with telling people that they’re sinners is that it really makes it hard for them to, to accept God as a loving God who wants to forgive them. And they just turn them off before the conversation even gets started. That’s right. And so,uif you, you talk about God’s forgiveness and his, his mercy in the beginning,uI think it creates more and more openness in people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:21):
So you talk about God, and then you talk about Christ who he is and what he did. He died on the cross to pay the price for our sins. And then the, the finish of the conversation is about faith. What faith is, it’s not just intellectual assent or mayor temporal faith, but what it is, is trusting in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life. So let’s, let’s go through each of these five steps. We’ve got grace, man, God Christ and faith. Give me some about each of those different steps and maybe some of the stories that you would use to communicate each of those steps of the gospel.
Pat Kendall (25:02):
Well, and each one of the steps of the gospel, I mean, we said outline and we’ve said presentation, but really it’s a conversation. The points of the outline are to keep the conversation going in the direction. We want it to go and not get on rabbit trails through the middle of it and not know where we were in, in sharing. And it gives us a place to come back to like he’s, like I said, we share with them that I know for certain I’m going to heaven. May I share with you how that is for you? And they say yes. And you start very simply that heaven is a free gift right off the top. They’ve got a smile that everything they’ve been looking for, that they’ve been working for or hoping to get, it’s a free gift
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:42):
Because who doesn’t like a free gift, especially at Christmas time,
Pat Kendall (25:46):
You know? And, and they’re already open. They’re already opening a gift in their mind. There are, they, they give you a smile, just like I got a smile off you just now Daniel. And so the scripture, and in each one of the sections, we have a script, a scripture and an illustration of some type. The scripture on this one is the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God, okay, the wages of sin is, but the gift of God is eternal life. And this is what we use through the presentation is we use eternal life. We speak of heaven and eternal life. We don’t say again, Christian saved or born again. We say eternal life, because those three can be misdefined. But eternal life, life that lasts forever. There is no way to miss define that. And they don’t a person doesn’t question.
Pat Kendall (26:28):
What do you mean? You turn a life, you know, what do you mean, Christian? What do you mean born again? They don’t say, what do you mean? They’ve turned life. Because if they ask what it is you say, well, that’s just life forever. And they say, Oh, okay. And it continues again. It’s a simple answer that continues the conversation that you’re going to finish up here in a little bit, but not yet. Again, it’s not earned deserved. And the scripture there is Ephesians two, eight and nine for by grace. You’re saved through faith that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. Again, it’s a gift that no man can boast. And so as we go through this, the illustrations, the scriptures all bring people to an overview of everything that Jesus did for us. And in the end, when he, Jamie, you said about faith at the end, that’s when we really bring it to a close, but in each one, man is a sinner and cannot save himself.
Pat Kendall (27:20):
Man is the center all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And then you talk about sin and Oh, an arrow, not hitting the bull’s eye every time. There’s a scripture. I don’t quote us as a scripture, but I say, you know, a lot of times people know that they have good things to do and they don’t do it. You know, sometimes that’s just bad to them. There was a lady that fell in front of them and they just walked by. Well, nobody else saw it. It’s just, you know, it’s just to them. And we have these things that we know overtly our sin and we have the other. And so we simply say with this free gift, it’s not earned deserved. And all of us have made mistakes that are going to keep the gift from being given. And that there’s nothing that we can do to save ourself. The illustration on that one is really kind of humorous. It’s like a person in the middle of a Lake. There’s no boat in sight. They can’t swim to shore. So they say themselves by pulling on their own hair and just lifting themselves out of the water. Well, it’s impossible. It just can’t be done.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:21):
Yeah. That’s a great illustration. All right. So you can’t save yourself, then you would start talking about God. What scriptures do you use in talking about God’s mercy and his, his sense of justice? Well,
Pat Kendall (28:35):
It is a sense of justice. Isn’t it is merciful and doesn’t want to punish sin. And the simplest scripture is that God is love and love does not want to punish love, wants to care for love. Love is an offering. Not it’s not, Oh, I don’t know the word I’m looking for, but love is just from the heart, from the heart of God. God is from his heart love.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:01):
And then how would you transition from talking about love to justice and the fact that God hates sin when that he will punish sin?
Pat Kendall (29:10):
And there’s a simple thing. There is it, God is just not only his merciful, but he’s also just, and must punish sin. We speak of a, a person that goes before a judge and is guilty of a crime. The judge is just in offering to that. The penalty deserved. If he’s a bank robber, it’s big. If he’s a murderer, it’s bigger. You know, if he murders many, it could be bigger again. But if he just stole $25 worth of things, then it’s a very low, but he’s just in, in punishment of what the crime is. And the scripture here that we use is by no means, will the guilty be set free? It’s an Exodus. And so the merciful God that doesn’t wanna punish us is also just, and must punish sin in that statement right there. You may have heard that he doesn’t want to punish us. He doesn’t want to punch at the person. So the person you’re speaking to Daniel, God doesn’t want to punish you, but God must punish sin. At that point in time, I’ve separated the sin and the person. So now the person can understand, even if they don’t realize it, that there’s a difference between them and their sin. And if there’s a difference between those two, we can separate it later and give it to Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:30):
All right. So you mentioned Jesus. Let’s talk about him. Who is Jesus and what did he do? And, and how would you talk to someone about who Jesus is?
Pat Kendall (30:42):
Sometimes we, we mentioned that Jesus Christ, he’s the infinite God man. He is completely God. He is completely, man. He, Jesus is the one that walked on the earth. You’ve heard about Jesus. And if they along the conversation, they will have asked maybe a question or two, because this is not a dissertation. This is not just a presentation. They don’t get to involve in. They are interactive with us. They’ll have little questions along the way. We’ll have little other anecdotes that we might lay in there. And a lot of times we will ask them, Oh, who, who do you know Jesus to be? That gives us a great definition of the religious background that they’ve got. Because if they come out of a non-Christian understanding of Jesus, then it helps us. It helps us to know that. And, but Jesus being the infinite God, man, it really depends on what they say more of what we say than what we want to say right there.
Pat Kendall (31:37):
Because when they reflect on Jesus a little bit, it gives us the ability to talk about what they’ve said in a gentle way, rather than just saying, Jesus is this. And they say, well, I just thought he was that. And that’s another stop sign. If they tell us a little bit about who they think Jesus is, or that they don’t know anything about him, which has come up, I really don’t. I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know anything about him, man. That’s a wide open field, but when they say, well, Jesus is this and this and this and this. And in the Mormon church where I was at or whatever this church I was at, they’ve told me about this. Now we’ve got a little inclination about where we need to go and that what he did for us. Now, this is one thing that we memorize and we request and require that the people in, he learned evangelism, explosion trainers know this statement that he died on the cross and Rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins and to purchase a place in heaven for us, because that is the simplest way to say what he did.
Pat Kendall (32:33):
Okay. Say it again. He died on the cross and Rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sin and to purchase a place for us in heaven.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:44):
That’s a beautiful statement. It’s worth memorizing.
Pat Kendall (32:47):
And, and it becomes easy if he died on the cross and Rose from the dead to pay the penalty for my sin. And he went to heaven to purchase a place for us. You know, he went there, he did something for us. And then he went there to do something for us because later we’re going to say how we get there. It’s evangelism explosion is laid out in a simple, progressive fashion to where we bring people that have maybe no idea of the gospel of Jesus Christ or a great idea, but just have never made a decision. It gives them a groundwork how’s that it gives them groundwork that take a stand on solid so they can understand it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:22):
I think the outline is actually really great because it gives you something to come back to it. It gives you confidence to know what you’re trying to communicate in and where you’re going with the conversation. And so it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. If someone asks a question and gets on a rabbit trail, you, you answer their question, but then bring them back to the presentation. Okay. So then the last debt is his faith. And so talk to me a little bit about faith and how you ask someone to come to the point of decision where they put their faith in Christ.
Pat Kendall (33:59):
And there’s, there’s always just kind of a little transition statement coming out of one section of the gospel, the outline, so to speak to another and coming out of Jesus Christ into faith is that he, by his grace freely offers us the gift of heaven, the gift of eternal life, and how do we receive it while we received the gift by faith. And so we’ve told them all about who they are, who God is, who Christ is and now, and we’ve told them about eternal life. And now we’re going to tell them how they can procure that for themselves in their life. And the first thing we tell them is what faith is not because all their life, if they’re not, they’ve trusted in something and temporal knowledge, we say temporal faith. And that is something that’s temporary. Like I prayed for grandmother who was sick and she got, well, I prayed for a great vacation.
Pat Kendall (34:50):
We came back and we had great pictures. I prayed that when the airplane landed, that, that it wouldn’t scare me this time. And I just felt comfortable. And, but it’s all a temporary situation. And so a lot of people feel that since they’ve prayed for temporary temporal things, that, that gives them something more than just an answer to that prayer and what is not, is not, not intellectual ascent is what we talk about, about knowing about Jesus. One of the illustrations we use, and this was a few years ago, but everybody knows who Michael Jordan is. Who would that be today? Daniel? Who would be a sports star today? A good one. A good one.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:30):
I dunno. Everyone knows who tiger woods is still know Michael Jordan. Yeah.
Pat Kendall (35:34):
Yeah. Mike, but anyway, like that, I’m sure if were, if you were to come up after a basketball game and Michael Jordan walked off, you know, and was standing there kind of by himself and you walk up and say, Michael, how’s it going, dude? Yeah. Good to see you. And man, you said this and that. And he said, well, excuse me, but who are you? I don’t know you, but Michael, I know you, you made 16 baskets and you did 86 points and you had triple doubles and doubles triples and all this stuff I know all about about it. And he said, well, that’s very well that you know about me, but he said, I know nothing of you. And see, that’s what people think that they’ve gone to church, that they’ve done things that get them to know about Christ, but what does Christ know about their heart? He knows that he’s not there yet. Possibly.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:17):
So then how would you bring someone to the point of, of making a decision? What would you say? Would you lead them in a prayer? Right? Then if they were interested in, in, in having eternal life. Well, you see, I stopped myself there. I was interested in becoming a Christian. I was about to say
Pat Kendall (36:37):
Interested in having eternal life. It’s so easy to be Christian, you know, and to use the the verbalize of who we are as Christians, because we use it at church all the time. But when we’re talking to a secular mind,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:48):
You got to think what they’re thinking. You’ve got to communicate in a way that they can.
Pat Kendall (36:53):
I understand. And you don’t want to lead them to a stop sign. You want to lead them to a, to a yellow light at worse, but always a green light to go through a yellow light. Sometimes you’ll, you’ll be able to work around a little question. They have a little sidebar they have, but red light is awful tough to rough around, but I just told them what it’s not. But now I’ve got to tell them what it is. And so now they’ve, they’ve heard that eternal life is out there. It’s being given to them. How do I get it? Well, you get it by faith, but not that kind of faith, but this kind of faith and what the Bible says, that the kind of faith that we have to have his faith and trusting in Jesus Christ alone for our eternal life. And he didn’t come just to merely, he came to earth to show us how to live, but he also came to earth to show us how we could live forever with him. And that’s how we receive eternal life being forever with him. And the Bible says very simply, it says, believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ. And you shall be saved, believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ. And you will receive eternal life. And so there we use the scripture, which says saved, but we always qualify it just a little bit back to what we’ve said, because we’ve been using eternal life throughout. So now we’re equating saved with eternal life. So we’re bringing them to a Christian ending.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:11):
And so how would you lead them to Christ? Would you actually pray a prayer with them? Or how do you bring them to that point of decision?
Pat Kendall (38:24):
Okay. Starting back at the first, the person said, no, they don’t know for sure. And they really don’t know what they’re trusting in. One of the answers we give back then one of the statements we give is, so then, and you can say this in the right manner. If you say it wrong, it hurts. But also then Daniel, you really don’t know how to have eternal life. And they say, well, no, I really don’t. And you, so, but if you say, well, you really don’t know how to get it, then do you dude, well, they’re going to say you get out of my door.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:55):
Sure. And now you’ve brought them all the way through this conversation. And you’ve quoted this verse that says everyone who believes in Jesus will be say, will have eternal life. So then you ask them now, do you know how to, okay, we’ve got eternal life
Pat Kendall (39:09):
Again. We’ve got a secular mind. We’re speaking to here that has a little bit of the spark of the faith. And they have seemingly agreed with you all the way through. And the simple question, which I’ve never heard through any other presentation, but evangelism explosion is the simple question that we ask them is, does this make, does this make sense to you? Because we’ve been speaking to their mind and their heart is becoming alive.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:32):
There’s one, the Bible says that faith comes by hearing. So you’re quoting the scriptures and talking to them. So faith is being born in that moment, right?
Pat Kendall (39:39):
And as their mind and their spirit come together as their mind and their heart come together. Does this make sense to you? Would it make sense to you if you needed no groceries for me to say, Hey, let’s go to the store and buy groceries. It doesn’t make sense. Why would you go if you don’t want to see this movie? And I say, Hey, I’m going to move. You want to go with me? Well, no, I don’t want to go there. It doesn’t make sense. So what I need to know is, is what I’ve shared with you. Does that make sense to you? If they say, no, you don’t say what didn’t make sense, because now we’re on a rabbit trail. Why are the people in Africa going to go to hell? And they never heard about Jesus? Why is this? Why is that? Where’s this?
Pat Kendall (40:17):
What is that? We’ve got rabbit trails that Satan is setting up right. Then that will lead us into an hour and a half a conversation that will not end where we want it to. So what we ask them is, does this make sense to you? And they say, well, no, not really. Well, did it make sense that heaven is a free gift that you can earn deserve it? Yeah. Well that, that man is a sinner. Did you understand how man is the center cannot save? Yes. And that Jesus, what he did for us was he died for us and Rose again and you know, and purchase a place in heaven. Yeah. And that God is merciful. Didn’t want to punish us, but must punish sin. No, I didn’t quite, I didn’t quite understand. Okay. Well let me, so now we have found where they didn’t understand and we can explain it to them that God is merciful.
Pat Kendall (41:01):
Doesn’t want to punish the person doesn’t want to punish us, but he must punish sin because he’s just, he’s a judge. He judges justly. And just like, if a person came up with 87 traffic tickets, the judge would have to say, you have to pay these because he’s adjust judge. And so what happens is at that point, we explain what they didn’t understand and say, well, does it make sense now? And they said, well, yeah, the next question is automatic. Would you like to receive the gift of eternal life? Because now it makes sense. Their mind is satisfied. That’s what we, we really have to, a lot of people whose mind is not satisfied. We’ll pray with you to get them out of your, get you out of their face. Sure. They just will. And so the, the generosity that God has put into this program is they understand where they’re going. They know the next step and we’re going to lead them there, but we get their permission. Do you understand, did it make sense? Yes, it did. Then would you like to receive the gift of eternal life? Yes, I would permission to proceed.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (42:08):
So then talk to me about follow up because of course that’s not the end of where God wants to take them. That’s just the beginning. How would you follow up on that person and get them hooked into a church and, and growing as a, as a new believer?
Pat Kendall (42:25):
Well, and before we pray and I’m trying to find it because my mind is slipping right now, we asked them, it’s the four RS. We say that what, what you need to do in order to do this is, do you understand that what you, Oh, excuse me. We asked them if you are ready to receive Christ as your Lord receive Christ as your savior, repent, turning around from where you were going to, where you are going, we ask them the qualifying questions that call them. And if they say yes to all of those, then I, then I asked them, is there a prayer that you have in your heart that you would like to say to Jesus? Many people will say, no, a few will say yes, I have a prayer. And they pray a wonderful prayer because they’ve been in church. They’ve just never had to receive. Or we lead them in a prayer. And at the end of the prayer, I have seen so many people go into prayer. I always close my eyes. I don’t look at them. We hold hands. We put a hand on their shoulder. We talk with them. We pray. And many, many, many times when we come out of that prayer, you look at a different person. You look at a person who is now a born again, Christian saved believer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:44):
That is one of the most exciting moments that you can experience to see that moment when someone’s eternal, destiny is changed. And, and I’ve seen it many times where, where people will, it looks like they’re shining. It’s you suddenly see Jesus in their eyes. There, there is something there’s a tangible change in their lives when they give their life to Jesus. Well, really amazing.
Pat Kendall (44:10):
That flashes me back to the story of really how my story started with my wife was I was in a little little church, a little neighborhood church. I went to for just a little while who didn’t have an evangelism program. And I’d been in another church with an evangelism program. And I heard that victory here in Tulsa was going to have a training, a seminar to certify teachers of the program, because what they have is they have teachers who teach the program, the trainers who help the others go out and then the the learner, so to speak the trainees. And so I went to victory to become a certified teacher, as I walked in the door of vicar Bible Institute, which was at 51st in Peoria at the time in the TL Osborn building. Yeah. Yeah. And I walked in and there’s a lady standing over by the mirrors.
Pat Kendall (45:00):
If you remember the building Daniel and I walked across the, there was a picture of, of the globe on the floor. And I walked across the world so to speak. And I talked to a young lady, a blonde at the door and asked her, you know, what I needed to do. I filled out a check for the seminar, for the, and handed her the check. And she gave me one of those little receipts. It’s about three inches long about an inch tall or so. And it said, I’d given her a, I think it was $295 for the session and she signed it and I just opened them Bible, stuck it in there and said, thank you. And walked on in, in the training, the teaching sessions, they taught us each one of the lessons over the next six days. I took a vacation actually from my job to go to the seminar.
Pat Kendall (45:45):
And on the first day, second day, and then the third day we go out just like you are in evangelism explosion. And the lady that took my money was the lady that happened to be the trainer in my group. I was familiar with he previously, the other gentleman wasn’t and my wife was the trainer. She was going to Victor Bible Institute at the time. And so we went out and we went out to Fairmont terrace here in Tulsa. We’re on the second floor. I’ll never forget where we were. We were on the second floor on the West side, in the middle door of the three apartments are on that floor. And Oh a grandmother named Donna, a short black lady came to the door, open the door and was very congenial. We spoke with her, we started the gospel presentation, talked with her and right in the middle, which happens sometimes she said, Oh, I need to go inside.
Pat Kendall (46:39):
I’ll be back. Well, we hear that before. And they don’t come back to the door or they make an excuse. Hey, I got to go. I’m not able to finish. But Donna went inside and came back, opened the door, back up, shut the door. She went in, opened the door back up and said, thank you so much. I just had to check on my grandson and go to the bathroom. And so she came back out and if I remember, I, the lady knew janitor her name Aster, or asked me or somebody, where were we? And we reminded again, it brings you back to the outline because there was a space in the middle. So we finished the presentation. Don understood the gospel. She was churched in the past, but not saved. And we prayed. Donna was hunched over a little heavy lady, just a little, but she was kind of hunched over from the pressure of raising her grandchildren.
Pat Kendall (47:30):
She had mentioned that her daughter was not in the picture anymore and the pressure of life was on her. And she was just a nice pleasant person, but just had so much pressure and coming out of the prayer, we all held hands. Janet prayed. I guess the other man that was with us was probably there anyway. But when we came out of the prayer, Donna was standing straight to pressure, was gone. The had changed and everything that Satan had laid on her was no longer with her. She smiled, her eyes were bright. She was a changed person, born again, believer. And she knew in her heart that she had changed because she had been, she had been in church all of her life, but she’d never made a decision. She knew she changed and we could physically see the difference of what the Holy spirit does to a person when it is.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (48:25):
And the Bible says that when one sinner comes to repentance, all of heaven rejoices. So that is the moment that a party starts in heaven. And as an evangelist, as someone who, who witnesses to people that brings such tremendous joy to my life, to see someone in that moment where they give their lives to Jesus. Well, I encourage you to go online, get yourself a copy of the book, evangelism explosion by James Kennedy. And you have,
Pat Kendall (48:57):
I got finished. The story finished the story, Donna. Yeah. Donna. So Donna so we leave and we, we meet Don a few more times. And Janet about all a while later, she goes to Dallas, Texas to go through a teaching seminar. Like I had gone through when she was my leader and came back and the first day she’s back. Now that she’s a teacher, I say, well, you just do the lesson tonight. And it’s just like, Whoa. Okay. And so she was just another lady at church. And about two years after that, I was standing in E with Brian Good friend of mine. And the lady I had been dating during that period of time. And I were no longer together. And I said, you know, Brian, I said, you know, I’m better as part of a couple I’m a pair, I’m half a pair and not a single.
Pat Kendall (49:48):
And he said, well, he said any return and pointed to Janet across the room. We’re in, in VBI at the time too. And he pointed across the room and he said, well, what about that? And over there, and I turned and looked at Janet and she changed from Jim’s being a lady at church to she’s pretty lady real nice. I had known her for about two years. We’d been on evangelism together. We’d been walking the same path side by side for a long time before we even met. And about, about 10 months from that day, we got married.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (50:20):
Wow. That’s wonderful. Now, when you started this story, I knew that you were married to Janet. So I just assumed that she was your wife and going out with you. I didn’t get the part that you hadn’t started dating yet, but that’s so wonderful. You know? So if you need to find a husband or wife, you better go get in an evangelism group. It’ll give you an opportunity to talk to a lot of people. And as you’re doing what God has called you to do that, you’ll find the right person to come alongside you.
Pat Kendall (50:51):
Well, the rest of the story on Janet and I, a couple of years later, we had the opportunity to start teaching there. Before you say I do class at victim. And what I always told the folks and what I told the singles was that as you come and you, your paths cross with somebody, well, that’s wonderful. But as they cross and you go your way and they go theirs, you just happened to be around them. But I said, what you look for in a mate is somebody, this walking and God has just kind of preparing you and you’ll walk together. And in one day, you’ll realize, you’ll look over and you see the same person doing the same thing you’re doing. And she’s kind of cute. And she’ll look over and say, Hey, there’s a guy over there just doing about same thing I’m doing. And he’s kind of cute. And you’ll walk these parallel paths for a while and God is preparing you. If you’re single right now and listen to this, he’s preparing someone for you that you’re going to be walking parallel to. And that’s the way of Janet and I were, we walked for about two years, the same path, just knowing each other, and then God put us together as one. Wow.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (51:48):
Awesome. Well, can I finish now or do you have another story, man? I got stories. We don’t have time. Hey, if you’re listening, I encourage you go online. Get yourself a copy of evangelism explosion by James Kennedy. There’s lots of great illustration. He go through the outline and find a church that’s offering training in evangelism explosion. And as you go through the material, we’re really help you to become proficient in sharing your faith. So brother, Pat, I’m so excited about how much enthusiasm you have for sharing your faith. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
Pat Kendall (52:30):
Well thank you for the invitation. This has been a great reflection for me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (52:34):
Thanks so much for listening today. Could you do me a favor? Go to Apple iTunes, find the evangelism podcast with Daniel King and leave us a review. Those reviews will help other people who are interested in evangelism. Find this podcast. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (52:54):
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.
