Welcome to this course on evangelism. As we go through the teaching, I want to try and share with you what I hope to accomplish, so that you can understand how I am approaching it and so that you can do the same.

When I am finished you should be able to take all these materials and teach them again to your own group of people.

As I journaled it, the Lord gave me a few things that He suggested I should follow. His suggestions are always pretty good so I am going to do just that.

Firstly He said I should paint pictures that remain in the mind. This is one of the best functions of teaching.

It is not enough just to give a whole lot of words and principles. You must somehow create pictures that people can remember, because we remember pictures more than we remember words. So as we go through this teaching I am hoping to paint some pictures for you.

Along the way I will do some illustrations as well. Hopefully these will be pictures that you will remember and not get confused on, but we will follow that through.

Learning Simple Truths

I want to teach you what you already know. You might wonder why I say this, but I want to teach it to you in a different way. You see teaching is taking people from the known into the unknown.

Most people will already know everything that I am going to be teaching in this seminar. I am not going to try and present some nice new, high level revelation and stuff you have never heard before. So please don't say to me,

"But I knew that. You didn't teach me anything new."

I am not planning to teach you anything new. I am planning to teach you what you already know, but perhaps in a different way from what you have heard it before. Hopefully I will do it in a way that will help you to understand it better.

I am assuming that you are ignorant, and you must also assume ignorance when you present the gospel. I am assuming that you do not know anything.

This means that although I am teaching you something you already know, I am teaching it to you as though you don't know it.

So if you feel like I am sharing with you as though you are just a young believer, you are ignorant or whatever the case may be, that is fine because I am doing just that.

I am assuming that you are a new believer who doesn't know terribly much. This means that I am going to try and start as low down as I can.

I am going to try and present deep truths that are simple enough for a child to understand it. You see if those who are younger can understand it, the older ones will definitely understand it, so nobody has any excuse.

Always teach from a low enough level so that each person present can understand it. The gospel is for everyone isn't it, right from children upwards.

Many Different Scenarios

As you teach this, I want you to realize that there are different kinds of unbeliever. Not all unbelievers are the same. They come from different backgrounds, from different cultures, and from different religious experiences.

Each of them may have a totally different starting point. Because of this your approach to them sometimes may have to change and you may have to run on a slightly different track.

I have found that what I am going to be giving you as a track has always worked for me in every single person that I have led to the Lord. I have always followed this same track and it has worked every time, and you will be amazed at how well it works.

When you start to use it you will sit back in amazement and think to yourself,

"Why didn't I do this before? It is really so easy."

Different Audiences

I want you to think about who your audience is. You see in this country where we live, I am going to be sharing with South Africans. This means that I must present it in that form.

I know what kind of people I am addressing. I must not speak about stuff that South Africans know nothing about, otherwise I am not teaching them from the known.

You might now take the same idea now that I am sharing with South Africans and share them in another country like Switzerland.

If you do it they are likely to give you a blank look and wonder what you are talking about. So you may have to modify how you present it to people in another country.

You must look at your audience and ask,

"Who am I speaking to? What should I use to get the message across to these people?"

These are all different aspects of presenting the seminar to people.

Religious Exposure

There are different groups that you need to take into account. Here in South Africa and probably every country, you have a group of people who have had some exposure to traditional religion.

Each country has like a state church or a group that everybody relates to. Here in South Africa, the NG or Dutch Reformed church has been a very big influence on people.

The Catholic church is so big, that every time you ask a person what church he goes to, he will tell you that he is Catholic, even though he hasn't been to church in his life. That is the only church he knows.

So try and look at the person that you are presenting to and ask,

"What background do they come from? Do they have a bit of religious background?"

If they do, your approach will have to take that into account.

Cultural Backgrounds

You may be dealing with someone who comes from a local culture and who has a cultural background.

Here in South Africa and again in Africa generally, we have cultures amongst the different tribes of people that exist. Many of them are caught in a cultural, semi-religious background that often involves spiritual things.

Some of them are brought up with the idea of worshipping the ancestors. This doesn't only happen in Africa; it happens in many of the Eastern countries as well. People have already had some of these religious ideas or spiritual ideas programmed into them.

So when you come to present the gospel you need to keep that in your mind. You need to try not to present to them something that only applies to your group of people, to your race or to your country.

Wherever you present the Word and the gospel, always look very carefully at your audience. Don't say,

"Well I have my little track to run on. Here we go."

Then you get half way and the person gives you that blank look that says they don't know what you are talking about. So keep that in mind, especially as you present a seminar to teach people how to present the gospel.

Different Cults

Then you have the other cults – the Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. There are many of them and they have a religious mindset which is totally different.

It is very easy to minister to them because they all have one philosophy. That philosophy is,

"There is a superior being that I must somehow please in order to get His favor. To do that I have to do to win His favor."

Every one of them is all works oriented. But the track that we are going to run on follows that exact principle, so it will apply to any of them.

Learning Evangelism Explosion

I originally got the track we are going to follow from D. James Kennedy in a course called Evangelism Explosion. It was developed many years ago.

This young preacher took over a church that was struggling and he formulated a method of evangelism. Then he began to teach his people how to take that method and apply it to the lost.

He sent them out to go and start witnessing to the community and the church grew and flourished. Evangelism Explosion became one of the biggest evangelistic training methods in the Body of Christ.

I learned it years when it first came out. It went through several stages of development that I am not even familiar with. But today you battle to get your hands on it.

James Kennedy died, and everything that he built was just pushed under the carpet. A new guy took over the church, and if you go to his old website you don't even find Evangelism Explosion mentioned.

Satan made sure to destroy this thing very quickly and well because it was so devastatingly powerful in winning the lost.

So I am not here to exalt D. James Kennedy. He was in fact a Presbyterian. He wasn't even Spirit-filled as far as I know, but he presented the gospel in a very beautiful way.

I have adapted his method of evangelism as I do with all my teaching. I have added some of my own stuff, but I used some of his original concepts and structures, so that is what I am going to be presenting to you.

Including Extra Stuff

There is one thing however that is not included with that. But with the knowledge that God has given us, we realize we must take into account the aspect of the principles I have taught in Overcoming Evil.

There is an enemy out there, and there is evil that is going to come against especially new believers. Their whole original gospel presentation didn't take the enemy into account or the opposition that would come from the enemy.

So we are going to set a new standard and set our own Evangelism Explosion method I hope. We are going to test it, make it work and go and present it to the world. We are going to take this course and teach it to people and get believers out there reaching the lost.

I have set a curriculum for this teaching. The Lord said that I should try and add pictures to it like illustrations from life. I have illustrations that I got from James Kennedy and some experiences of my own to add along the way.

As we go through this I am going to try and add more pictures and diagrams because a picture speaks a thousand words.

After our first session, the chances are I will go back and think in retrospect and say,

"Oh yes I could have added that here."

That is exactly what James Kennedy did. He started with his original little presentation and built it up and up.

He presented it in a way that you could go through the whole thing in five minutes. So if you are standing at a bus stop and you get to witness to someone, you can present the gospel to them and lead them to the Lord in five minutes.

But if you have time to sit down, you can speak for an hour. You can go through it in more detail and lay it out systematically. The idea is you can compress it or expand it; whatever is needed.

If the person starts to argue or if there are additional complications, you have different ways to handle it and follow it through. So it becomes quite a big, complex system and it presents the essence of the gospel.

Creating Workshops

In time I want to create workshops based on the curriculum. These have to be practical, and they should encourage people to share with one another and minister to one another.

In this way the seminar is not totally dependent on the speaker. But each time you share something it will be like in a school. They will take a practical project, and they will discuss it amongst themselves, share and minister and apply it practically.

Then at the end of the seminar they won't go home and think,

"Wow that was an awesome seminar. I'm so inspired."

Someone may ask them,

"What did you learn there?"

"Hmm, well they taught on that topic and there was something about that."

That is usually what happens in a seminar isn't it? So you want to make the seminar in such a way, that by the time people go home they remember it and it has become theirs. That is another reason why you need to keep it simple.