After just 18 months of using the EE training ministry at his church, more than 40 people made professions of faith in Christ and 100 people attend weekly. “The EE ministry was the direct source of growth,” he says.

In a short time, Pastor Tomo’s church has four teams of 12 trained witnesses going out weekly to share their faith. “In one month,” he says with much enthusiasm, “we experienced 14 professions of faith in Christ.” He expresses reverence to God in this outpouring of His grace. “I believe we have been entrusted with something revolutionary and extraordinary,” he says.

In Japan, less than one percent of the population is Christian, but Pastor Tomo believes that with EE, a Japanese reformation will take place. “Japan has been called ‘Asia’s last fortress’ among disappointed missionaries, but EE will forever change my country,” exclaims Pastor Tomo.

More EE training events are planned in Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo prefectures this summer.

We weren’t ready for what happened next.  Mary’s husband forbade her from attending our church (which was only 5 persons at that time) and she landed up following a relative to one of the largest churches in town. We were devastated.  Why God, did you send her to this large church?  Surely we needed her more. If this was the way it was going to go, church planting was going to be a long, long road.

Months later, a pastor friend of mine remarked that we had to give away our first fruit. Although his statement didn’t seem to make the pain more bearable, it did teach me to surrender to God’s ways which are beyond our understanding.

Some years later, I was invited to speak at this same large church and after the service Mary came up and introduced herself. You know, I was real glad to see her and to discover that she had grown in the Lord and she asked me to pray for her husband.

Still some more years passed by and one day, Mary visited me at our church with her husband who had by then accepted the Lord. What a pleasant surprise!  I need to also mention that in the intervening years this large church had twice donated new equipment to our church, again surprising me. More importantly, unknown to them, they had “returned a favor” when on more than one occasion, the pastor referred people to our church.

We kind of like to control things – including God’s grace. We have no right to say Mary belongs to our church.  Her salvation is God’s grace. God is free to send her anywhere.  That’s what grace is. Bearing in mind that churches in some towns can be competitive, we have no right to receive gifts from another church in the same town. But this is what grace is.  Unearned and undeserved!

The prophet Elijah was discouraged because he felt that only he alone was faithful to God. God reminded him that He had 7000 believers who had not worshipped Baal. God was greater than what Elijah had thought (1 Kings 19:14-18).

The apostle John once saw a stranger casting out demons. This man was not one of their team and John had told this man to stop.  Jesus rebuked John and explained that His kingdom was much greater than John’s perspective. (Mark 9:38-40).

My friend, God is much bigger than you think! Work hard, serve Him faithfully and diligently, but leave the results to Him.  He probably will surprise you! Life is kind of exciting, no?

Chris Castaldo talks with Collin Hansen about how to faithfully fulfill the Great Commission as we’re faithfully present.

Original Article

David Platt, senior pastor at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., told those gathered at an evangelical conference last week in Louisville, Ky., that while local missions and ministry “are totally necessary” evangelism abroad is necessary also.

“Pastors who believe that God is sovereign over all things will lead Christians to die for the sake of all peoples,” he stressed.

Platt told those gathered at the Together for The Gospel conference about his experiences abroad and how recently he had been in Northern Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula.

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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.

In this series of blogs, I refer to EE either as a training tool or to the network of believers who use this tool. Let me share with you why I would love to continue to work with EE. Click below to read Part 1 & 2:

Part 1 of 3

• I can help others find new life in Christ
• I can more capably fulfill my role as pastor

Part 2 of 3

• I can work with others to obey the great commission
• I can make good use of my resources to reach the lost

I CAN HELP TO BUILD MORE LEADERS

EE trainers who faithfully train others to share their faith often progress on to take up leadership positions in their respective local churches and elsewhere. EE helps make disciples through a process of training others. EE trainers learn skills in mentoring, caring, encouraging, communicating, teaching and correcting. Specifically, they are trained to be trainers of other soul winners. They almost always become better leaders who are faithful, available and teachable.

Whether full-time or part-time, everyone who serve in EE is driven by the passion for souls and obedience to the Great Commission. They learn humility in serving and by modeling witnessing as a lifestyle, and servant-leadership, they invariably, grow in character, into the image of Christ.

There are many wonderful testimonies of many who first served as EE trainers and have now become pastors and elders in their churches. As they serve with a broader vision for the church of Jesus Christ, they move in the direction of an ever-growing love for all churches, for all believers and for all who need the saving grace of Christ.

I CAN HELP TO REPRODUCE THE MINISTRY IN OTHERS

When we use EE as a training tool, it helps standardize the training of soul winners (and trainers of soul winners) and accordingly, those trained can be used in other locations and training events. Every year, thousands of copies of the same materials are printed for use in similar trainings the world over. Indonesians, Americans, Filipinos come over to train Malaysian believers. Malaysian EE teachers go to China, to India, to Myanmar, to Vietnam and to many other places. All this is possible because the ministry is easily reproduced.

It is amazing how the Lord is using such a singular training method so often and so successfully in training believers to share their faith. This EE tool has spawned a myriad of other training methods, copied by others and rehashed. Imitation is the best form of flattery, is it not?

I close by inviting you: Would you join me and others in EE, to work together? So that this gospel will be preached in all the world, so that the end will come?

To God alone be all the glory.

In this series of blogs, I refer to EE either as a training tool or to the network of believers who use this tool. Let me share with you why I would love to continue to work with EE. See Part 1 of 3.

I CAN WORK WITH OTHERS TO OBEY THE GREAT COMMISSION

By definition, the Great Commission is a huge task i.e. to make disciples of “ALL” nations (“people-groups”). And how big a job is that? This job is bigger than any single church. EE helps me to see beyond my own community, my own nation and into the 17,000 people-groups worldwide, some 40% of which are still “unreached.”

It is difficult to possess the “all nations” mentality when all that we do to serve the Lord is only to build our own local church. Don’t get me wrong. Every believer should have, as his or her priority to serve in the local church. That is the beginning of Christian service. It is where we are prepared to serve, where our skills and character are honed. But maturity in Christian service must be to take responsibility for the gospel to be preached in “all nations.”

Serving with EE allows me to train believers and leaders outside my own local church. The job to reach the world cannot be accomplished by me or my church alone. It is not enough if every single believer in my church is actively sharing his faith. We need every believer in every church to do his part to save the world. When my church members and I are invited to go to another church to train others, it gives us a better perspective of the Great Commission. We are happy when someone is saved even when he joins another church. We learn to value the contribution of every church in fulfilling the Great Commission.

EE also unites believers and pastors across denomination and national lines. Just this past month several EE trained folks from different churches worked together to conduct an XEE training semester at a seminary in Malaysia. Groups of EE trained folks from different churches regularly assist at clinics conducted in other churches.

I also count it a privilege that our EE leaders are invited to minister in churches across many different denominations. EE is a common platform that unites all of us because it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I CAN MAKE GOOD USE OF MY RESOURCES TO REACH THE LOST

EE pools together various resources for the work of the gospel. These resources are used effectively and efficiently when we design, plan and print training materials that can be used widely to train people of different age groups, languages, specific faith backgrounds and even those with special learning abilities.

EE’s Hope For Kids materials are used to train thousands of children all around the world to share their faith. The use of EE Weavers is increasing as more and more oral learners are being trained. XEE, Classic EE, EV2, Share Your Faith materials have specific targets and those who use these materials find them very helpful. These materials have been and are being translated into many languages for use throughout the world.

Funds and man-hours poured into the EE ministry inevitably become very effective when we consider the number of believers that can be trained and the souls that are saved. Every year EE trains thousands of believers all over the world. During these trainings, millions make professions of faith in Christ.

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!

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus struggled with the commission that the Father had given, which was to die on the cross. If He had His way, Jesus would have preferred not to do it. However, He obeyed and prayed, “Nevertheless not My will, but Yours be done.”

The Apostle Paul explains that Christ took on the nature of a servant and humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Php 2:5-8). Paul asked his readers to have the same attitude as that of Christ.

Jesus learned obedience from the things He suffered (Heb 5:8). We will not learn obedience any other way. If there is no pain and suffering involved when we have to carry out a command, can we really be said to have obeyed? If you command me to eat a sumptuous meal and I comply, am I an obedient person? (No need to command me to eat, just show me the food!)

You will only know that I am obedient when I carry out a command that causes me to suffer. Jesus was obedient to the Father’s will. We know that because He suffered and died on the cross.

The Great Commission is a command. Like Jesus, you will only learn obedience from the things you suffer. Go and share your faith with someone today. If it causes you some inconvenience, pain or suffering, then you can know that you are obedient. To obey the Father, Jesus went to the cross. That’s why we call this Friday “good”.

Make obeying the Great Commission your cross. It may well turn out to be “good.”

Have a great Easter weekend as you remember the death and resurrection of our beloved Saviour.