Devon is doing great work to expand EE in the Caribbean. Here’s the report he sent out to the EE guys who came down from the U.S. to help lead Share Your Faith workshops:

With your sacrifice and true denial of self, you have assisted the EE ministry in Jamaica and by extension, the Caribbean, to facilitate 25 Share Your Faith workshops with 245 churches being represented and 1,239 believers equipped to be more effective in sharing their faith so that “everyone hears.”  WOW!  Praise the Lord!  Very importantly, we had 44 pastors attending these workshops and we already have 5 pastors representing preaching circuits of about 40 churches that are eager to participate in an EV2 launch.

Praise the Lord! My prayer is that this training blitz will lead to a multiplied impact for the Gospel, and that many more will hear the Good News as a result. Also, special thanks to the team of U.S. trainers who traveled south to train Jamaican Christians to share their faith.

For any American who lived through the Watergate era the memory of Chuck Colson is indelibly fixed. But, in the midst of Watergate, he had a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ. After serving seven months in prison for a Watergate-related offense, he put the same drive, tenacity, and brilliance that helped elect a president into building Prison Fellowship, an outreach to prisoners now active in more than 100 nations around the world.

We at Evangelism Explosion have always been an extreme fan of Prison Fellowship. Thousands have been led to the Lord and discipled by this great ministry. It demonstrates one of EE’s core principles: that every Christian is to be a witness. We’ve all been planted in a mission field and given the opportunity to make a difference. This is exactly what Chuck Colson did and the world is a better place for it.

Chuck Colson will be remembered as well as a Christian intellectual, a man whose columns, books, and daily “Breakpoint” radio commentaries brought Christian understanding to issues and helped believers adopt a biblically grounded Christian worldview.  He was also a co-founder of the Manhattan Declaration, which was a coalition of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians to speak out for religious liberty, the sanctity of life and traditional marriage.

We are grateful to God for the life of Chuck Colson. His gifts and talents were put at the complete service of His savior in the nearly 40 years since he bowed his knee to Christ. Like EE’s late founder, Dr. D. James Kennedy, his life touched millions. He will be greatly missed. Our prayers and thoughts are extended to his wife and his family as they mourn his death.

We live in a culture in which ultimate questions are avoided like the plague. The sex lives of Hollywood celebrities or the annual earnings of America’s most wealthy are just fine for casual conversation. But the question of God’s existence or what really happened on Easter morning is, for many, not fit for polite conversation. Bringing up those matters violates a cardinal rule of Western secular culture.

Dr. D. James Kennedy, the founder of Evangelism Explosion, brilliantly explained the eclipse of God in secular culture:

The word secularism comes from the Latin word secularis, which means “the present world” or in other words, “life as conceived without any relationship to eternity or to God.” That is secularism. The Western world has become almost 99 percent secular. Listen to any talk show on television.

This smoked plastic dome that has settled down upon the city of man does not allow him to see past death into the future. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? He cannot know. Is there a God? “The dome is too smoky. I cannot see up to God. I cannot see out into the future.” That is secularism, and this nation and the Western world have been overwhelmingly secularized in a Darwinian, atheistic, materialistic life.

The Easter holiday is a global event that lifts, if for just a short while, the smoked plastic dome under which millions live and, tragically, die—discovering too late the truth we celebrate at Easter.

This Easter, I encourage you to shine the light of the Gospel into that smoked dome. Share the Gospel with friends and neighbors and others with whom God brings you into contact. And, remember, telling others about Jesus is the most fun a Christian can have this side of heaven!

May God bless you this Easter! He is risen, indeed!

God is doing great things in the Philippines where I had the joy of speaking to more than 300 EE trainers at the first EE Philippines national convention last November. Recently, an EE training conference was held on the island of Mindanao for tribal pastors. (There are some 18 indigenous people groups, or tribes, on the island.)
Here is a first-hand report from John Ricards who is with Ministries to Christian Nationals, Inc, and oversees their Tribal Gospel Fellowship ministry.  He shares what occurred at this conference. You’ll be encouraged …

Dear John,

Just a quick word to mention that our conference was VERY, VERY successful, and the EE presenters did a great job.  On Tuesday, we presented the basic concepts (in the tribal pastors’ local language) in a series of workshops. Then, on Wednesday morning, the EE coordinator for Cagayan de Oro followed up with more informative lessons in the morning.

Then, in the afternoon, our whole group shuttled out to one of the ‘tent cities” (refugee centers) where families who had been displaced by Sendong (the December 2011 typhoon and flood) were living in very primitive conditions.  Here, our pastors paired off and roamed around looking for people to engage with their new bold witness.  At the reporting time, later that afternoon, we discovered that between 25 and 35 people prayed to receive Christ!  Many of the reports were very emotional.

One pastor confessed that he had never before shared his faith with another person, and he felt that a huge weight had been lifted from his spirit.  Others shared similar tales of release and freedom…as well as the excitement of so many who came to Christ.

We are praying now that this material can be shared by the tribal pastors with their congregations up in the mountains, and our next news will be of villages being transformed by the gospel!

Thanks again for your involvement and support of this strategic work.

Blessings!!

John Ricards

Nearly 1,000 people died when Typhoon Sendong struck Mindanao last December. Please pray for the people still rebuilding and living in shelters in the wake of this storm. And pray for these newly trained pastors as they, in turn, train their congregations to bring the Gospel to tribal peoples who do not yet know the love of God in Jesus Christ. May whole villages be transformed by the Good News we are celebrating this Resurrection Sunday!

An EE field worker traveled to Jos recently to visit the Church of Christ in Nigeria which was attacked on February 26 and prepared an amazing report of God’s mercy and power in the face of a cruel assault.

He said he was still 200 yards away from the blast site when he found “broken windows, bent and mangled trim on the buildings.” When he and local EE staff members approached the still-under-construction worship center where the car bomb detonated, he was shocked at the power of the blast visible in the “bent and twisted metal” of what had once been an automobile. The vehicle was just 20 feet from where 1,000 people had been worshipping God on the morning of the bombing. I’ll let him tell the story from here:

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of God’s presence. With the proximity of the blast to the building, the fact the building had no walls between the worshipers and the blast and flying debris, [it was] just open space where men, women, and youth were engaged in worship. The picture of the devastation in my mind was horrible. All around me I could see twisted metal, broken pieces of wood, and buildings that had been damaged.

That Sunday morning a suicide bomber from Boco Haram had intended to kill as many people as possible. He had succeeded to kill an eight-year-old girl who was struck by the car as he sped onto the church property, an 8-month-old, and two others. 38 others were injured and treated.

What I saw that day will stick in my mind for a long time. My God, our God, is an awesome God.

The following Sunday you would think the worshippers would have stayed home. Not at the Church of Christ in Jos, Nigeria. You see, the next Sunday there were more worshippers, they flowed outside the building walls. That day they all gave thanks to our Great God!

On Sunday, March 11, 2012, a Catholic Church in Jos was bombed in the same fashion. Another 5 were killed in that blast.

Please continue to pray for Jos and all of Nigeria that there might be peace in that region.

Amen. Please pray for an end to the violence in Jos and for God’s continued blessing on the work he is doing in Jos and across Nigeria through Evangelism Explosion. May His name be praised!

That’s the suggestion behind an item in the March Christianity Today headlined, “The Question That Died.” It cites a recent Lifeway Research poll that found 46 percent of Americans never ask themselves the question, “If I were to die today, do I know for sure that I would go to heaven?” The poll also reports that the number of people who think about that question daily dropped from 20 percent in 2006 to 8 percent in this recent poll.

Well, Christianity Today didn’t report it, but the poll also found that 42 percent of Americans do wonder if they are going to heaven. Here’s the breakdown as to when they wonder: 8 percent daily, 12 percent weekly, 11 percent monthly, and 11 percent yearly. That means a total of 130 million Americans wonder whether they’re going to heaven; 25 million ask themselves about it daily. This is a question about which Americans are concerned.

And, really, the question should be, “Are you willing to think about eternal things?”  Because we find few who are not, regardless of whether or not it has been on their mind in the last day or month. As Ken Silva EE North America Vice President told Christianity Today, “People are open to talking about eternal things, whether they’ve thought about this question or not. It tends to be people who don’t evangelize who imagine people aren’t open.”

Agreed. Just last week my team approached three people and all three were open and interested. We shared the Gospel with all three, and one gave his heart to Christ.

Let me add this story. The day I heard about the earlier Lifeway poll reporting that 20 percent of Americans, one in five, wonder about heaven daily, I was in Dallas and went into a steak house with a pastor friend. I was amazed by the poll result, so I mentioned it to the waitress.

“You’re the first person I’ve talked to since I heard that. I’ve got to ask you, do you think about death every day?” And she just began to weep and she pulled up her sleeves and her wrists were just destroyed. She said, “I’ve tried to kill myself on several occasions. This last time, about three months ago, I was in the hospital for a month. I’ve been out and every day I’ve been wondering, ‘What’s gonna happen to me.’ And I’ve been praying to God, ‘If there is a God, would you please send someone to tell me what’s gonna happen?’” We had the joy of sharing the Gospel with her, leading her to Jesus, and plugging her into my pastor friend’s church.

The truth is people are very much interested in what happens after death. The interesting thing is that so few Christians are willing to go out and have those conversations. What we desperately need today are believers willing to go out and engage people and share the claims of Jesus Christ with them. And, you know, doing so is actually the most fun a Christian can have this side of heaven!

Well, I’d like to give you even more detailed and recent information from Lincoln Wee, who has been working alongside Pastor Tomo, National Director of EE Japan, since the earthquake and tsunami struck the nation one year ago on March 11. That disaster, Lincoln reports, brought “a clear and abiding change in the spiritual condition of the pastors throughout Japan.” Just one percent of Japanese claim to be Christian but I believe that will change as more and more pastors and their congregations get trained and begin to share Christ using EE.

Here’s Lincoln’s report on what God is doing in Japan:

Last month (Feb), Pastor Tomo conducted a 3-day Share Your Faith workshop in Akita, which is one of the most unchurched areas of Japan. It is cold and snowy and quite remote. 26 pastors attended the workshop from different denominations and locations around that region, including from Miyagi, Sendai and Iwate (parts of the disaster area). After the workshop, they expressed a strong desire to implement EE in their local churches. They write to Pastor Tomo almost every day to ask him when he will return to help them implement EE and to do OJTs with them.

Many were so excited, they immediately shared about EE with their church elders and boards. One pastor used the Gospel presentation from the pulpit during his Sunday service and a seeker who was in the service decided to pray to receive the free gift of eternal life. This pastor is now so convinced, he exclaimed that he has finally found what he has been searching for. Another pastor and his church have asked if Pastor Tomo would be willing to receive him for 3 or 4 months in Kyoto so that he could learn from Pastor Tomo and our church how to implement EE, to train believers and to go on OJTs.

This response is even greater than the response of the pastors that Pastor Tomo trained in Chiba last year. In Chiba, the oldest clinician was 80 years old and at the 6-day clinic, he was heard regularly sighing deeply and expressing humble regret that he did not start using EE earlier in his over 50 years of ministry. However, because we could not follow-up closely with the local church implementation after the Chiba clinic, not many have started implementing. And while there is still excitement, there is also some disappointment which is not expressed, but which I can sense, because we are not able to help in the implementation.

Life for the average Japanese pastor is quite hard. They have passion for the lost, renewed with vigor because of the recent disasters. Unfortunately, like many pastors, they were not equipped for evangelism or multiplication during their years in seminary and as a consequence, have not been able to lead people to Jesus. Their churches remain small and their congregations are ageing. Most churches are not able to raise up from the younger generation leaders to take over their ministries. Many churches may have to make do without a pastor.

Last night, we met a missionary pastor who has been serving in Japan for 5 years. And he has not seen his church grow and is so anxious that he often is unable to sleep at night. That is what many pastors are now facing. They are so passionate, but all their energy and passion is lost without an effective tool.

To Pastor Tomo, EE is the last piece of this great puzzle, the last hope for Japan to find Jesus. It is the most effective tool to give the pastors in Japan. EE works very well in Japan. Since Easter, when 5 people were baptised, a further 5 were baptised at Christmas. All these people came to Christ after hearing the Gospel presentation which started with two questions and ended with a further question, “would you like to receive the free gift of eternal life today”.

This last two months alone at the 3rd local semester being conducted at Pastor Tomo’s church, 10 people have prayed to receive Jesus Christ during OJTs. My wife and I know from our own personal experience that EE works in Japan. We have both led Japanese people to our Lord and Savior since arriving in Japan in September 2011.

Francis Xavier commented before he left Japan for China that the spiritual makeup of the Japanese people was most acutely designed and conditioned for a relationship with God. Their faithfulness, loyalty and passion, and susceptibility to spiritual matters was unique to any peoples that he had visited and this led him to believe that the entire nation of Japan could be reached for Christ.

That is our fervent belief. That the entire nation can be reached for Jesus Christ through the equipping of the local church, so that every believer in every age group will be witnessing to every person.

Please remember to pray for us.

• For unity in our team, and that there will be a single mindedness of purpose and vision.
• For wisdom in how to develop and meet the demands for training with our limited resources.
• For ministry partners, people who have a heart for the lost and who want to partner with God and see His great and awesome works in Japan.

It’s in this environment of crisis, trauma, and grief that we’ve seen many churches start the ministry of EE. The effort there is being led by Pastor Tomo, a remarkable man who came to the Lord through EE while here in the states! He always wanted to tell Jim Kennedy how much he appreciated him starting EE. But Dr. Kennedy went home to be with Jesus before Pastor Tomo had the chance to tell him.

So in honor of Dr. Kennedy he decided to do the next best thing: start EE back in Japan. Everyone said that it wouldn’t work. But guess what? It did work! And Pastor Tomo’s church has become the fastest growing church in Japan. Pastor Tomo will now serve as National Director of EE Japan. Along with a family from Singapore and a couple from Australia, he is building a team with a vision to reach Japan with the Gospel through EE.

The need is urgent. Japan has 127 million people and just 8,000 Protestant churches. Church growth is anemic or non-existent with just one person added to a church by baptism on average per year. The number of churches in Japan, Pastor Tomo said, is actually expected to drop to 4,000 within 15 to 20 years “unless something truly revolutionary takes place and causes drastic change. I believe EE Japan is called to do this job!”

In an email late last year, he projected that his church in Kyoto would see 10 or 11 people baptized by the end of 2011. “Thank God for EE effectiveness!” he wrote.

Pastor Tomo recently held the very first EE leadership clinic taught in Japanese by a Japanese trainer using Japanese-language materials. Seven pastors attended the course which was, he said, “very successful.” Here’s what he told us:

The responses of the students for the first half clinic were tremendous. They all said they wished they had learned this when they were in seminary. They are all evangelical pastors but have never learned the skill of personal witness before.

One of the students is over 70 years old and had prostate cancer removed few years ago. He was the most expressive in the class. He shared many times in the three days with me that he was regretting not being able to learn how to share the gospel all these years. His church was always small and often reluctant about evangelism. He said he might have been able to see more souls to come to know Christ if he knew EE before. And I agreed with him. EE has arrived to Japan way too late. Yet, he and all other students were so excited with the possibility that EE might be the solution for the declining condition of their churches and denomination.

All these years, I often felt alone because I was the only one promoting EE in this country. Sometimes I was disappointed by critical ones who said EE was too counter cultural. Some would say EE was too old for anything. Some said I was to commit only to the pastoral ministry. But this week, I was completely redeemed. Seeing the faces of students full of new hope and joy, I was so confirmed that the Lord was definitely with us.

Watch Pastor Tomo share about what God has done in Japan through EE in this video.

My friend Malcolm Thomas has been involved in Evangelism Explosion for 30 years and is Chairman of the Board for EE South Africa. “If you’re involved in this ministry,” he says, “you know that God is alive because you see him in action. You see the power of his word that penetrates the hearts of people.”

Malcolm shared this dramatic encounter with a man desperate for help at our 50^th anniversary celebration on Feb. 24. It demonstrates, once more, that we serve a God who cares deeply for the lost. It shows how he will use us, if we’re willing and equipped. Here’s Malcolm’s account:

I was driving home one day and had no intention of stopping on the highway when I saw a young soldier walking on the side of the road. And as I drove past, it was like an elastic band was around me in my car and I just swerved and I stopped. And as he came running to the car, the Spirit of God said to me, “Don’t speak to him about anything. Immediately share the Gospel with him.”

He got in and I introduced myself and I said, “This is going to sound crazy to you but I’d like to ask you a question. Have you come to the place in your own spiritual life where you know for sure that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?” And he was stunned. He was shocked. I saw he was very emotional. He was a young, strapping soldier and I asked him for permission to share the Good News with him. I shared the Gospel with him. He was very emotional. He was actually weeping. And he prayed to accept Christ.

And then he said this to me. “Malcolm, you need to understand what’s happened here. My life is a total disaster. I made a decision this morning that there’s no reason left for me to live. My car’s parked elsewhere in Johannesburg. I was going to fetch my car and kill myself. And as I was walking along the road, I said, ‘God, if there is a God, you’ll reveal yourself to me.’ And then your car stopped.

My friend, God loves sinners. And he wants to use forgiven sinners like you and me to bring his grace in Christ to others. That’s what EE is all about—training you to share Christ so you can, in turn, train others to do the same. All so that people on the road to hell, like this young soldier who cried out to God, will discover, sometimes with tears of joy, how very real and good God is.

That book is one that Anne Kennedy, the wife of EE’s late founder, Dr. D. James Kennedy, has kept for years. In it she has written all the people she has won to Jesus Christ—their names, their addresses, the times that she has prayed for them, the dates on which she has sent notes to encourage them.

That began the ministry of Evangelism Explosion. I believe that same passion that still lives in us today at EE. We have a burning desire to see lost men and women won to Christ and to bring the Gospel to where it has never been. It is a testament to the passion for people.

One of the very first people to be trained in EE, Anne is a delightful lady whom my wife Ann and I have been privileged to know for many years.  Anne Kennedy spoke at our 50th anniversary banquet last Friday, Feb. 24th, and offered a few recollections from a lifetime of sharing Christ with others.

She recalled how things did not always go exactly as planned. The first EE clinics had two days of classes followed by on-the-job training in evangelism at night during which trainers would present the gospel while clinicians observed. It was the clinicians turn on the third night to share the gospel. Well, as Anne said, “There were some shaky knees that night.”  So much so that one clinician, a “Rev. Smith,” didn’t answer when called to breakfast at the home in which he was staying. When his room was checked, the bed was made and the luggage was gone.  As Anne said, he “had flown the coop,”

But most often, things went very right, as God made “divine appointments” to bring people to himself. Anne shared this encounter that took place while visiting her father in the hospital after surgery.

I was waiting in his room for him to come out of recovery.  There was an older man in the other bed and I went over to talk to him.  I shared the Gospel and he prayed to receive Christ.  When my Dad was wheeled into the room the man got out of bed and rushed to his bedside and said “I’m going to heaven, I’m going to heaven!” My Dad was groggy and didn’t know what was going on, but that little man was so excited that he was going to heaven he just HAD to tell someone right away.   He was VERY ill and wasn’t supposed to get out of bed.  After that, they restrained him and to my knowledge was not ever up again before he died and went to heaven.  I think of how the Lord arranged all of this for “Such a Time as This.”

Anne was ready and able to share the gospel with an elderly man at death’s door because she had been trained in EE. The same was true for Malcolm Thomas, EE South Africa board chairman, who told at the banquet about his dramatic encounter with a desperate young soldier facing a Christ-less eternity.  I’ll share that story in my next post.