Daniel Patterson is only twenty years old but he feels called by God to be an evangelist. Today he interviews me and asks me questions about what it means to be an evangelist.

Questions Daniel King Answers:

How did you get started in evangelism and crusades? And how did you know that God called you to it?

Who did you look up to when you were young?

How do you raise support?

How do you learn to walk by faith in order to do crusades?

What advice would you give to younger evangelists?

Please visit The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes and leave a review.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Daniel Patterson is only 20 years old, but he feels called by God to be an evangelist. Today, he interviews

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:09):
Me on the evangelism podcast and asks me questions about what it means to be an evangelist.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:17):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King we’re 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 podcast.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
I’m Daniel King and I am always excited about leading people to Jesus. Today. I have a very special guest Daniel Patterson. He is a student at victory college here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he has a calling on his life to be an evangelist. And so day today, he came over to ask me some questions about how to be an evangelist Daniel, welcome to the evangelism podcast. Awesome.

Daniel Patterson (01:25):
Thanks so much for having me on Daniel. Yeah,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:27):
It’s great to be here with you. So tell me a little bit about yourself, first of all, how do you know that you have this calling to be an evangelist? How did you discover that?

Daniel Patterson (01:38):
So so when I was younger, I actually had a speech impediment and stutter. And then my sophomore year at Victory youth group, I actually gave my life to Christ. And then, so at victory Christian school where I went to high school on the third floor, there’s the old pastor of victory Billy Joe Daugherty. And on that third floor, it’s some lean crusades of like thousands and tens of thousands of people. And I felt as I was walking down that hallway, my sophomore year that I thought this like soft whisper from God that, that you’re going to do this one day. And the reason I knew it was from God, the call to be an evangelist and to speak was because I would never ask for that myself. I avoided speaking opportunities before that. So I knew from that moment on that, like, God actually called me to this because it was something that, that it scared me and that I at at the beginning didn’t want to do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:38):
So pastor Billy Joe Daugherty was my pastor ever since I was six years old. And not only was he a great pastor, but he was a great evangelist. He did tons of evangelistic crusades. I remember when I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to go to St. Petersburg, Russia. And he had decided to do a crusade every single month for 18 months in the Olympic stadium there in St. Petersburg. And one of the memories that that really impacted me was in this stadium filled with thousands and thousands of people, probably 30,000 people up to the rafters when he gave the altar call, the people came running as fast as they could from the front to the back in order to give their lives to Jesus. It was just so right. Well, Daniel, how can I help you? You, you have some, some questions that you’d like to ask. What, what type of questions would you like to

Daniel Patterson (03:36):
Yeah. Also honestly, thank you so much for having me on and the opportunity to talk to you. I it’s a real honor. Yeah. So these are some of the questions that I have for you. So the first question is how did you get started in evangelism and crusades? And how did you know that God called you to it?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:54):
My father pastored a small church in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. When I was five years old and one day he invited a prophetess to come and speak, and she was woken up by God the night before. And God told her tomorrow, there will be someone in church wearing a blue shirt. And you are to prophesied that this person wearing a blue shirt is called to be an evangelist and to go to nations all over the world. So, so he came to church the next day, looked around the audience and there was no one wearing a blue shirt. And then she remembered that all the kids workers were downstairs. So she thought maybe one of them would be wearing a blue shirt. So she turned to my dad said, could you, could you bring all the kids workers up? And so they came up and none of them were wearing a blue shirt, but there was a long line of kids at the end of the line was a cute little five-year-old boy wearing a blue shirt.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:44):
And she said, God, is this the one that God said yes. And so that cute five-year-old boy was me. And she prophesied that day. You’re called to be an evangelist and called to go to nations around the world. And so I didn’t waste any time. I started preaching when I was six years old preached in my father’s church. And we still have the cassette tape from one of those sermons. And I preached like for 45 minutes, which is pretty good for a six-year-old. But one of the things I say on that sermon is if you are saved, stay saved. If you aren’t saved, you better get saved. And so even as a six-year-old, I sounded like an evangelist. And my father told me stories about how, at one time he was doing a revival in Cloudcroft and we, we went out and we were passing out flyers.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:34):
It’s a touristy town. So all the tourists come and we’re passing out flyers, inviting people to come to the, the revival. And I was only five or six years old. And I gave a flyer to one man. And he looked at it and saw that it was religious and tore it up into a bunch of pieces. And, and through the confetti into the wind. And I went to my father and my father thought, Oh, why did you get Daniel Little Danny? Did you get your feelings hurt when that man rejected your flyer? And I was through cheers. I said, no, it wasn’t that he rejected the flyer. I said, daddy crying, because I don’t want that man to go to hell. And so from a very young age, God put this desire in me to, to be an evangelist. And then when I was 10 years old, my parents became missionaries in the country of Mexico.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:29):
And so they, they, my, both, my mom and dad went to victories, mission training school. And then they went down to Mexico and were, were missionary sent out by victory. And I was only 10 years old, but since they were my legal guardians, I had to go with them. And, and so to be part of our family was to be part of the ministry. I just grew up on the, the mission field there in Mexico ministering, right alongside my parents. I, I helped to set up the sound system. I sat out the chairs. I helped to pass out beans and rice. I helped to stuff newsletters every single month to send to supporters so that we could raise money to be able to stay on the mission field. I was basically the slave labor of the ministry, but throughout it all, I loved every second of it because I loved seeing people give their lives to Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:21):
And I remember that when I was probably 13 or 14, we’d be driving past a soccer field in Mexico. They, they love soccer down there and I’d grab. And my dad by the army said, dad, dad, we can fill that soccer field up with people, preach to them about Jesus. And so even when I was very young, just had, this does desire to be an evangelist. And then when I was 15 years old, I was reading a success book. As if you want to be successful, you need to write down your goals. And one of the goals that they said would be good for young people is to try to become a millionaire by the age of 30. And I realized that because of my upbringing as a missionary in Mexico, that money was not what was important to me. What was important was souls.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:03):
And so at the age of 15, I wrote down, I, Daniel King wants to lead 1 million people to Jesus. Before I turned 30 years of age, instead of trying to become a millionaire, I wanted to lead a million heirs into the kingdom of God. And so God started opening up doors in different nations. I actually did my first crusade in Honduras with my friend Rigo Galvez. He opened the door for me to do that first crusade. And then the next year we did another couple of crusades and then the next year. And so that, that first crusade was while I was still a student at oral Roberts university. And it was a huge step of faith to try to raise the money, to pay the budget for that crusade and everything, but God provided. And I remember that first crusade in Honduras, we, we ministered to 43,000 people that week. I took a team of 10 people from ORU and it was, it was magnificent what God did there.

Daniel Patterson (09:03):
That that’s so awesome. And so like obviously like growing up preaching and doing evangelism and stuff like that, you had to have somebody who you looked up to who you’re like, I want to do that one day. I want to be like him. Who was that person growing up?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:18):
Well, we already mentioned Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty, who was my pastor. And of course I loved watching the crusade videos of what Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty did. And then growing up, I really admired the ministries of TL Osborn, great missionary evangelists from here in Tulsa, oral Roberts. My father went to oral Roberts university. So I grew up hearing the stories of, of oral and his tent crusades. And I also loved Billy Graham. And so I would look at the pictures in their books, you know, T.L. Osborn, If you read any of his books, he always puts pictures of all the different crusades that he did and the people being healed in his books and I’d see those pictures. And that would put a vision in my heart that I could do that too. And so I didn’t know how to make it happen. I didn’t know how you organize a Crusader. Anything. All I, all I knew was that I saw this picture of someone preaching to thousands of people and dream that I could do that someday too.

Daniel Patterson (10:23):
That’s that’s so cool. So has cause you, you minister in Africa a lot, correct? Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:31):
We go to Africa quite a bit. Just this last month I was in Ethiopia. We did a great crusade in a little village in Ethiopia. It was a nine hour drive over bumpy roads. No pavement, we got out there, no plumbing. So you just have to use the outhouse. And we did a crusade and, and our biggest crowd, we had about 10,000 people in this little village and, and God did tremendous miracles. And then the month before I was in Tanzania at the invitation of Daniel Kolenda with Christ for all nations. And he invited me to participate in operation to capitalists, which they did five crusades in five different cities, over a two week period. And so Daniel Kolenda went and he preached one night at each of those crusades, but he invited other evangelists to come and preach the other nights. And so I was privileged to be a part of that. So yeah, we love Africa a lot.

Daniel Patterson (11:30):
That’s so cool. And so you do this all the time. You’re, you’re preaching other countries, whether it’s in Mexico or in the countries in Africa, how do you continually raise support? Because it’s not just like you go there and have no money. You have to raise support.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:46):
Yeah. I remember the first mission trip that I ever went on. It was with pastor John Tasch, who was the children’s pastor at victory at that time. And they were going on a missions trip to Venezuela. And I think the, the cost of the trip was about $800, which I was maybe about 14 years old at the time. And of course for a 14 year old $800 looks insurmountable. That’s a huge amount of money for a teenager. And I decided that I really wanted to go on that trip to Venezuela, to, to help,ureach people out in the jungles of Venezuela,uout on the Amazon river. And so this is the way I, I raised money to be able to do it. I made a list of all of the friends that I had, every single friend I could think of family members, friends, anybody I’d ever met, any, any adult that I knew, I made up a list.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:56):
And then I wrote a simple letter, said, hi, I’m Daniel King, son of Robert and Susan King. And you know, they are missionaries in Mexico, but God has called me to go on a missions trip to Venezuela, and I want to go and to preach the gospel in Venezuela. Could you give something to help make that happen? I, I need a total of $800. And so if you could get $50 or $20, whatever you can give, that would be a huge blessing to help me go to Venezuela. And so I took all these, these envelopes and stuffed the letters into them, put stamps on them, prayed over them. And it was about 45 or 50 envelopes that I sent out and I mailed them out. And I remember probably about 15 people responded and some people gave $20. Some people gave $50. One person gave about $200, but after it was all added up, the, those 15 people paid the cost of the $800 that I needed to go to Venezuela.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:05):
And so I said, praise the Lord. That that’s awesome. And so then the next year there was another opportunity to, to go on a missions trip. And so again I, I sent out letters in and I think the second mission trip was about $1,200. And so that was a huge amount bigger than $800. But what guy was doing was he was stretching my faith to believe him for miracles. And so God provided for that second trip. And then the next one, and then, and the next one, and then the time came for me to do my first crusade. And I had heard about an evangelists here in Tulsa who was doing large evangelistic crusades. And so I want to learn how to do it. And he was doing a crusade down in El Salvador. So I called his office and said, can I come down to El Salvador with you to participate in, in the crusade and to see how to set it up?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:58):
And he said, sure. So I, I actually went down two weeks early and watched, as they’re putting up the posters, passing out flyers, building relationships with all the churches, all the process that it goes into organizing an event. And the crusade director for that crusade was, was Regal Galvez in El Salvador. And it was in San Miguel. It was a magnificent crusade. I think they ended up with over 40,000 people filling up a soccer field. It w it was just powerful, lots of miracles every night. I learned so much just being there and Rigo, he, I was telling him about my desire to do crusades. And he says, why don’t you come next year and do a crusade in Honduras with me? And so, like the biggest faith that I could have, I, I thought, and I said, well, maybe if I work hard all year, I could raise $5,000.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:02):
And he laughed actually. And he said, well, I don’t do such small crusades like that. And he says, could you, could you raise $10,000? And so instantly he doubled the size of my faith. And so I said, yeah, I’ll go, let’s go for it. So I set to work. I was still a student at ORU and I was still needing to buy school books and, and pay for school bills and all of that. But I did the same thing I’d done when I was a little kid. I got a list of all the people that I knew, anybody I could think of that would be interested in missions. And by this time the list was a little bit longer and I sent them letters. I called some of them. I followed up with some emails and over the course of a year, I was able to raise the $10,000 budget.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:56):
And actually, I think it went a little bit more than that. It ended up being probably about $14,000 and we took 10 students from, or are you down with me? And in that week, we managed to minister to a total of 43,000 people in Honduras. And so that was how the first crusade happened. And then the next year I decided I wanted to do two crusades. I went from doing one to two and each of the crusades had had bigger budgets. One, one crusade was in Panama. And I remember that one had about a $20,000 budget. And we, we worked hard to, to raise the money to make it happen. And when the, the, the crusade was over, we managed to pay every bill. And I remember we’d received an offering from the people and we counted up the offering and we were counting out like little coins and stuff.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:54):
And I took all those little coins to go pay the hotel bill. And they’re like, well, this is the last hundred and $50 that I owe in coins. And so they had to count them all out. But the point is that God provided for that crusade. And so that’s kind of how we have built our ministry. We have never had any huge donors who just give us an enormous amount. We have mostly been supported by individuals and churches who would give $20, a hundred dollars partners that would partner with us on a regular basis. And over time, that amount adds up and we’re able to do crusades, but still to this day, every single crusade is a walk of faith. When we put the crusade on the calendar, we rarely have the money to, to say, yes, we can do this. And we have all the money in the bank and we’re going to do it. It’s, it’s a walk of faith. We put it on the calendar and then we start trusting God. And in tens and twenties and hundreds, and sometimes thousands, the, the money comes in and we’re able to do, do the crusade.

Daniel Patterson (19:15):
That’s so cool. How you, so you said that you walk by faith, every ship, every crusade, believing God to make a way for it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:24):
Yeah, absolutely. Every single crusade is, is a walk of faith. And what’s really interesting is that we started small. So, so when you take a walk of faith, the first step is probably a very small step. And then you see God prove himself faithful with that first step. And then you can take a bigger step and then you see God faithful. Then you take a bigger step in a bigger step. And so I think one of the things that discourage people sometimes when they’re first getting started out in evangelism is they look at the pictures of, of Reinhardt Bunky, who was a great evangelist. And they see a crowd of a million people, and they want to start there preach into a crowd of a million people. But in order to do that, it requires a huge budget and people get discouraged because they start trying to raise this huge budget.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:18):
And not only does it take a huge budget, but it also takes you know, a reputation and, and, and Reinhard Bonnke. He took 40 years building a beautiful reputation in Africa as an evangelist who preach good news. And he spent 40 years developing his partner base. And so you, you can’t look at the, the big crusade that Reinhardt Bonnke did. And, and think that you can start there, you’ve got to start with a village or going on a mission trip, just start with where you are. And then you’ll find that God will increase your faith. And eventually you can get to the point where you could do huge crusades with a hundred thousand or a million people, but you don’t start there. You start with a small step of faith and then you take another step and then you take another step. And eventually you become a giant striding across the land, doing wonderful things for the kingdom.

Daniel Patterson (21:24):
Oh God. That that’s really cool. That kind of reminds me of Billy Graham. Like people look at him and he’d preach and packed out like a stadiums, whether it’s in New York or in the cotton bowl in Dallas. And people look at that and like, Oh my gosh, she had this immediate success. Like he did so good. And like, like, I want to be like him. But before that, he preached for, for years to just smaller to smaller groups and eventually gotten made away from him in Los Angeles and so forth. So being faithful in the small is important.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:55):
Yeah. Billy Graham worked for youth for Christ when he was young and traveled around doing youth meetings and, and God honored that. And as he traveled, he started to build his team. And so then when it came time for him to do crusades, he had the team and some of the resources to be able to make that happen.

Daniel Patterson (22:16):
And like, I know for me, you know, I wanna, you know, I want to lead crusades one day. And for me know, I’m trying to start faithful in the small just last week, I, I coached basketball on the side and I was helping a basketball camp and I got to preach to the basketball camp in 15 to 20 kids gave their life to Christ glory to God is amazing. So I know being faithful in the smallest is really important. And so, especially for people who are my age and people wanting to be evangelists full time one day, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned over the years that, that you would tell yourself when you were younger, that you would tell us a younger evangelists. Now,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:58):
I think I would share two words. The first word would be the word boldness, just be bold. And going after the promises of God, be bold preaching to basketball players, be bold, praying for sick people, be bold in asking for money to go on a mission trip, be bold and, and going on missions trips just don’t be timid, be bold, go all out full speed and do everything you can to do something for God. And so be bold in that. And then the second word I would probably share is, is patience be patient because it doesn’t come overnight. I think God rewards faithfulness. And so you remember the story of the, the, the talents where Jesus told the story about how the rich man, he had three servants, one servant, he gave five talents, another servant. He gave two talents, third, certain he gave one talent.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:56):
Then he went on a long journey. And after he came back, the guy with five talents says, I, I invested the money and now here’s 10 talents. And Jesus said, well done, my good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful with small things. Now I’ll put you in charge of many things. And then the servant with the two talents, he doubled his money and he had four talents. But the guy with one talent, he took his talent. He went and buried it in the ground and he says, I know you’re a rough taskmaster. And so I’m bringing this back to you. And so what did the rich master do? He took the talent from that one and gave it to the man who had 10 talents. And it was because the, the servant who only had one talent, he was not faithful with what God had given him.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:43):
And so if you will be faithful with what God has given you with this, this desire that God has placed in your heart to be an evangelist. If, if you will look for every opportunity to share the gospel look for opportunities to go on missions trips, to even start doing crusades, then God will prove himself faithful. And so you, you, you, you take what you have. You’re faithful to God. Then God will be faithful to you and he will multiply what you have. And in the end, God will trust you with doing big things for his kingdom, but it all begins with, with starting where you are and being faithful with, with what God has given you,

Daniel Patterson (25:32):
Man. That’s so good. Thank you for having me on today. I really appreciate it. I’m definitely going to be listening to this podcast again and, and taking it in. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:42):
Daniel, it is wonderful to have you on the evangelism podcast. I love coaching evangelists. I love helping young evangelists like you to get started. One of the things that, that God put in my heart, I want to lead a million people that Jesus, every year of my life. So that’s one thing I’m going for. But another thing is in my lifetime, I want to raise up a hundred evangelists who would each lead at least a million people to Jesus. And so I think you can be one of them. You can lead a million people to just Reinhard Bonnke. He once told me, he says, Daniel, that which is considered great today will be normal tomorrow. And so I think the greatest harvest of souls in history is still to come. Jesus is coming soon. And I think we need to make every single second count for God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:33):
And we’re going to see the greatest harvest of souls right before Jesus comes back. And you are part of that generation that is going to, to experience that. And so despite the great things that Billy Graham and Reinhardt, Bunky and teal Osborn saw in their ministries, I think that in ministries today started by people like you. We can see an acceleration and even greater things than what we have seen in the past. And so I encourage you as an evangelist. I believe in you. I believe God’s hand is on you. And I believe that God is going to do tremendous things through you. I forgot to ask you how old are you? I’m 20 years old. You’re 20 years old. So you’re already getting started in your calling. Well, let me pray for you really quick. Yes, sir. Your heavenly father, I thank you for Daniel Patterson.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:29):
And I thank you for this calling that you have on his life for him to be an evangelist. And Lord, I pray that you would open up opportunities for him to preach the gospel. And I pray that thousands and even millions of people would come into your kingdom because of his voice. And Lord, I pray that as he’s faithful with the small things that you give him, that you would open up greater and greater doors of ministry to him in Jesus name. Amen. And amen. Daniel. It’s great having you on the evangelism podcast. Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I want to ask you to do me a favor, go to Apple iTunes, search for the evangelism podcast in subscribe, and then leave us a review. Your review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. Thank you so much

Evangelism Podcast Host (28:27):
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.