G’day, I’m Pete Hughes.Welcome to the One Thing podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for Gospel Centre ministry every week, I think brought to you by Rich Australia.We’d love to see thousands of healthy evangelistic and multiplying churches all over our country.And you can’t have healthy evangelistic multiplying churches without the gospel.

And so over the last little while, we’ve been looking at different kinds of possible presentations, talking about different, talking to different missions pastors.And today we wanna keep digging into that.We’re gonna look at the world of gospel presentations.And today we have Dave Jensen on to talk about that sort of thing, evangelism and gospel presentations.

Gay Dave, how are you?Go babe, I’m good guys.Answer question of you straight away.Absolutely.You say missions passes with.A plural.Now I say mission pasta with a singular.I’m just wondering, you know, you don’t say evangelism after, so what’s with the S at the end of mission?

Why are you doing that?Yeah, that’s a good question.I I don’t know what I was.Yeah, no, thank you for picking that up.I don’t know whether I was it was just a slip of the tongue or whether it was just, I don’t think it’s a good question to ask.In every email you’ve always submissions past that and I appreciate, you know, the the bigger scope of this scene, but no show.

So do you reckon it should be mission pasta?Yeah, OK.Right.Well, thank you for correcting me.Not sure because there is only one mission.Yeah.But I think mission says that global missions connection, which is why I think that’s where the term comes from, missions with that capital so that the the plural part of it.

But yeah.Could get into where that is actually, we’ve got some episodes coming up a little bit later on about how to actually be a good partner with overseas missions, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.So yeah, no, sorry mate, I actually wanted to.

Before we get into today, I want to ask what do you think God is teaching you right now?Suffering and strength I think.I’m reading through Acts at the moment and in Acts chapter 5, which I’m looking at today, and there’s a endless stream of the, the apostles are suffering that is just about to kick off.

And then they just continually return back to the place of the suffering.You know, it doesn’t stop them doing all these things.And yet through that God actually produces joy in that, not despite it, but because of it.And I just think, you know how they say, don’t trust a skinny chef, don’t trust the bald Barber.

I think you don’t want to trust a Christian who promises a suffering preexistence and, and actually that it’s suffering that causes so much growth in us.So I’m not suffering particularly at the moment personally, but I have in the past and I will again, yeah.But yeah, I think I’m being told that.

Yeah, that’s true.That actually came up in a meeting earlier this morning for us, for me.And yeah, just thinking about where is suffering in the Christian life.So that’s, yeah, that’s interesting.I don’t know whether that’s God preparing me for a season of suffering, and personally I’d rather it didn’t, but let me, let me move on.

And I should also mention Dave’s been fairly regular with the Reach Australia thing, so I’m gonna put a bunch of stuff in the toolbox about some of the things he’s done in the past.So make sure you get into that.But for now, you press play on another episode of The One Thing What makes a good gospel presentation?Today’s podcast is brought to you by CCLI.

Do you need copyright piece of mind?For simple, comprehensive and affordable copyright solutions for your church, we’re here for you.Call CLI on One 300 double 25400 or visit ccli.com.And now back to the podcast.

Alright, Dave, you’ve you’ve worked as a mission pastor.Got that right?Yeah, yeah.And and an evangelist.What what made you wake up one morning and decide, you know what?I I need to go and be an evangelist?Well, interesting story, Pete.

No, it’s interesting in the sense that it was the last thing I thought I’d ever do because when I got involved in evangelism in any sort of formal way at a beach missions or or church or whatever, it was always this very scary and terrifying thing.

It wasn’t churches.All bridge missions felt that it was like door knocking or walk up or or whatever.And I didn’t become a Christian to my late 20s.And so the idea of socially sort of crossing so many Rubicons of of awkwardness there was just so terrifying.So in my mind, so the sociated evangelism with these terrifying socially destructive practises.

Now I wanna say evangelism is terrifying.It always will be terrifying, but not because it’s, you know, socially difficult in an Australian context.That’s not the thing that makes it terrifying.The thing that makes it terrifying is you’re telling people both the worst and the best news that will ever happen, but in the in the midst of that.

So I would avoid that stuff as much as possible.However, when I began to work as a pastor and got involved in pastoral ministry, it became very, very clear.The two things.Number one, I, I just have a, I have a deep, deep burden for non Christian people.

I think that’s partially come about because I became a Christian later in life.So it meant I knew what it was to be a non Christian And the false water that, you know, it’s not living water, it’s toilet water, you know, in the world is offering to us.And so I know that’s the reality of life outside of Christ.

So that’s always been in there.But the second part was I, I saw one or two of my friends and just people I knew become Christians through my ministry.And it was incredibly addictive.It was thrilling and, you know, and wonderful.

And so I just overtime began to think, Gee, there’s nothing better for me to spend my time doing.The other part of this, of course, is that no one else was doing it, Pete.And where I was arranged like no one else wants to do it.Who wants to be a professional evangelist?No one.So it was a big vacuum there and I thought I’d try and Philip.Well, actually that was my next question was to go if you knew someone who was thinking about becoming an Avantis or if you were talking to a trainer of somebody, say doing a traineeship and they’ve gone.

I, I think I wanna do be an evangelist.I think that’s where I really wanna spend my life.Would you get?What advice would you give them?It’s a little bit similar to the person who’s considering overseas mission on that topic.Yeah.So there’s no point considering going across the world if you won’t go across the street, you know, And that the mission we are on to proclaim the gospel to a dying world.

That needs to be, I think the thing that drives you forward as the most important thing that you will do as if you’re training someone who that’s just an obvious burden for them.That doesn’t mean they they are naturally a gifted evangelists.They may or may not be.

It doesn’t mean that they have to.They’ll be an evangelism pastor or minister of professional and or something like that.But I think it does mean that we need to flesh out how evangelism best works in the context of our churches, of our culture, and and really begin to encourage that person to think about, hey, how can you use this thing that you have this gift, this burden, this desire to see the most amount of people become Christians, the most amount of time.

And that means giving them opportunities, but not throwing them off a bridge, but more bungee jumping, you know, you gotta say safety.Yeah, put them in there.And I think that’s part of the problem is that often we associate event.We make evangelism so socially horrific when it doesn’t have to be socially horrific for those reasons.

And so it’s actually about, I suppose, bringing them in, allowing them to engage in it, and just watching, encouraging, pushing them on.Yeah.Yeah.So turning that desire into practise, that’s that’s going.To be the best first.Step along the way.Alright, let’s talk about gospel presentations because there’s been a lot of different gospel presentations around.

I, I want to start with a, I don’t know whether this is a murky question, but what, what do you reckon needs to be in an effective presentation of the gospel?Like at one hand someone could say, oh, it’s the whole Bible, you got to put everything in there.And another end, I guess someone could say, well, Jesus is Lord and that’s it.

But there’s going to be what do you reckon needs to be in an effective presentation of the gospel for it to be effective?Yeah, that’s a terrific question is murky, isn’t it?Because the answer to the both extreme examples is yes and yes and also no and no and so, yeah, yeah.

You know, Jesus is Lord, is the shortest summary of the gospel.Sure.But that is not an effective, usually an effective means of presenting the gospel to people who are not Christians because it provides no context or understanding of what those words mean.

So it is a good gospel summary, but it is not an effective evangelistic presentation, which is what we’re talking about.And that’s the same with the whole council of God in the Bible, the whole council.I mean, it’s a wonderful thing to sit with people and work through.However, if we’re talking about effective evangelistic presentations, generally most people are not Christians will not have the time with the capacity to sit there and understand the whole council of God through the whole Bible.

So I think what we need to do is go to the Scriptures ourselves and see what the New Testament points us to as being the most essential part of a gospel presentation.And thankfully for US1 Corinthians 15 exists and in one contains 15 the the apostle, he really says this is what I passed on to you, the gospel.

And then he says of these things, arrows are of first importance and and then what he does with the remainder of that first standard of one question 15 is hit on several key things which I obviously agree with as the essential components of it.So I I think there’s 9 words which best describe it’s my nine word summary.

If you’re right, you need to flush it out.But it is God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixed it.And so for me that means creation, the fall and redemption through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.So you now the apostle doesn’t speak about creation. 1 Corinthians 15.

He does say according to the Scriptures, it doesn’t look like creation.But of course, it’s impossible for us to properly articulate scene without articulating the Lord over all things.So I think you need to talk about people being created by God and that God has, you know, created them to rule over them, but to be in a relationship with them.

To then discuss sin in the context of breaking not rules, but rule and relationship, turning your back on God, but also refusing to abide by his rule in life.The consequences I’ve seen as a result of that judgement, sorry, separation from God and judgement.

And then most beautifully, most wonderfully, the the solution that God has offered us in their life, death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.Now I think so creation, the fall, redemption, those years, the essential elements.

But in order for it to be an effective evangelistic presentation, of course we need to mimic the greatest evangelist of all Jesus and Jesus Marks marked the one beautiful for this.Of course, when he evangelises, how does he what does he always include, repent and believe?So you need to give the appropriate response.

So I think those are the essential elements.Now, I’ve gotta say, we all have different opportunities evangelistically with all sorts of different people.It may be a bus ride, it may be a plane trip, it may be a next door neighbour, it may be a spouse, it may be a child, it may be all sort of things.

So it’s not a competition where you’ve got to try and fill all of this in at once.Yeah, that’s yeah.I think we wanna have as a goal evangelistically, if we are evangelising anyone that hey, I want to get to the point of my relationship with this person either quickly or over a bit of time, I can really begin to talk about, sorry, where I can talk about the gospel and those components I’ve said and tell people what the appropriate response that may take a conversation.

It’s like putt putt golf.How many hits does it take to get the ball into putt putt golf?It can be one.It’s more likely 700, but you know, success still the at the end of the game is to get the ball in the in the cup.And I think for us, that’s the same with evangelism.We’re always aiming towards.

I wanna tell this person God made it, we broke it.Jesus fixed it.So there there is on one hand, there’s that journey that they’ve got to take along the way of going, OK, I need to, and, and sometimes that can be the 700 hit kind of thing.Sure.But on the other side there is, I mean, So what I’m hearing from you is that that 9 words summary is sort of the, the minimum bar to where you go.

OK, have I given this person enough information for me to say there’s therefore say therefore you need to repent and believe?Is that what you’re saying?Is that that that’s your nine word summary?Is that kind of the bar for you?Yeah, that’s that’s right, Pete.I think part of it is also to be, I don’t wanna go too much into rabbit warranty, but no.

Yeah, yeah.You know, Romans chapter one makes it clear to us that not only does every human being, but leaving the existence of our God, that every human being has suppressed the truth about the God, the one true God.And I know from my own life I became a Christian after having heard the gospel 9,000,000 times a day.

And then the day I became a Christian, I heard a gospel summary, a gospel presentation which was identical in many senses, everything I did my whole life.But that was the moment 2 Corinthians 4 God opened my blind eyes.And so I think we need to have confidence that if we explain things clearly, clarity is key here and not compromise.

If we explain things clearly, that for the people God is calling to himself, that has biblically and also evidentially over 2000 years proven to be there, if you like, the the key that unlocks life, the gospel is the power of salvation.How can those believe you haven’t heard that?

We’re actually presenting the gospel, engaging them with it so they understand it properly, and then calling for a response.And that can be to our Muslim, to an atheist, to a Buddhist, to agnostic, to a Catholic, to a nominal Protestant or any number.There’s no Part B of this.

This is the thing where I’m at.Yeah, that’s.Right.Yeah, yeah, yeah.OK.OK.So we talked a little bit about we could keep going on this because as you say, it’s a bit of a rabbit Warren.Um, but I want to move a little bit more to the format.I mean, because there are different ways of presenting the gospel.

There’s, there’s personal presentations like two ways to leave.There’s courses like life and you’re working on a course at the moment.Is that right?Yeah, yeah, yeah.So of course, well, more than working on, I’ve been using for the last seven or eight years is going to be released soon through advice Medical Discover.

In essence, you know, it’s pretty similar to your Christian explorer, your life.But sure, that’s with my fat head on it soon anyway.All right, well, when it’s done, we’ll we’ll get you back on and so we can have a closer look at that one.And there’s so there’s courses, there’s personal presentations, there’s books and we are going to talk about this because you have also done a book and we’ll come back to that in a moment.

There’s online presentations.Do you reckon some formats work better than others when it comes to explaining the gospel?Yes.OK, what?What works better?I think there’s three components to most conversions now, saying most because not all God converts people in a whole range of ways.

That’s in the Bible.God can do people on a whole range of ways in human history.In my own family alone, my father is the Billy Graham crusade.My wife has school scripture, My sister doesn’t remember not being a Christian.For me, it was a different one, you know, So there’s no right or wrong way.People become Christians.If you become a Christian, that’s how you become a Christian.

But there are three components at the core of what Ioffer is most conversions.And those 3 components are the word.And when I say the word, I don’t mean that someone to sit there with the Bible open to do it, but I mean the truth of the word of God that he proclaims through his Word.

So the word plus people, so that most people who become Christians as adults, the direct or indirect influence that has led to that decision has been a Christian that they know.Now that’s just 90% of people become Christians as adults they know are Christian and that person has somehow influenced him to think about this in some way.

So, and then in addition to that in the evangelist, the evangelism process, the continued relational connectivity with with people is just an integral part of something that can really connect with people.And so the word plus people.

And the third one is time.Time.While someone may become a Christian, you know, you have your bank, you have your Apostle Paul conversions, you know, so you speak, It’s a, it’s a complete, I think, era of a misunderstanding, I should say, of reality.

To think that even if someone becomes a Christian after hearing the gospel once that they no longer need any time in the evangelization process.Because what needs to happen then is that baby Christian needs to be the, the maturity process begins.

And how that begins for that person will be different to how it needs to sort of continue for a Christian of 10 years or 20 years or whatever.So the word +2 plus time there, the three essential components.And I think if you considered maybe in Australian history over the last 100 years, the big most fruitful evangelistic endeavours, I think there’s primarily 3.

Now the first one is the Billy Graham crusade of 1959.That had an enormous impact on people.However, when you study that crusade, what you notice of course is that that wasn’t a flash in the pan.That came about as the result of five years planning with Gospel Bible believing churches who then had a very, very clear follow-up plan when people profess faith and came forward and they were put in touch with their local church who discipled that person through a course that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association even do.

So it’s not this one big one event.No, no, it’s a it was part of much, much bigger.The 2nd evangelistic movement that’s been most fruitful has been Sunday schools that most people become Christians under the age of 18, in fact, under the age of 12 through Scripture and Sunday schools.

And so that’s the word plus people plus time.But the third one, the one that we’re in the midst of a golden age of, is evangelistic courses.And evangelistic courses such as Life or Christian Explored or discover, give the beginning of that word, plus people plus time, sort of contingent.

But they’re most effective if they don’t just finish after five weeks or seven weeks.But actually, that’s the first of a years worth of continuing to meet to discuss those things.There’s certainly a lot more time in that whole kind of process gives you a lot more exposure to people.

But OK, but what about, I know there’s been a lot of sort of online presentations, whether it’s been on YouTube or whether there’s sort of on a website or wherever.How effective are they, do you reckon?Well, I became a Christian through one, so that’s true.Yeah.

I’m, I’m.I’m not biassed towards them though because of that.I’ve gotta say I’m as in I may be, but I don’t think I am sure.I’m it’s, it’s tricky here because I think we wanna advocate at all possible means and all possible avenues and endeavours available to us to proclaim the gospel to a dying world.

And if that means sky riding, go for it.However, skywriting is a fairly inefficient and ineffective way of sorry.It’s efficient, reaches a lot of people.Yeah, yeah, yeah.I’ve explained the gospel why?Well, it doesn’t have time, it doesn’t have people.It may have the word very quickly, but it’s evaporates into the sky.

That’s the same with tracts or.Audio cassettes back in the day, as I say with podcasts and the same with YouTube videos today.And they don’t generally in the interaction with them.It contain people.And so that’s one of the the parts of it that came not necessarily be the thing that that is the most effective form.

So what that means is we want to make sure that we don’t have that as our major church world.I don’t think we should have our major evangelistic endeavour, but hey, we’re going to give people a book or hey, we’re going to send people to this YouTube channel or hey, here’s a podcast.That’s how we evangelise people.I think that’s foolishness.

However, I do think at the same point that those things, all those things can be ways in which people are exposed to the gospel and usually the partnership with either a lifetime of evangelism or previous evangelism or cut, you know, any number of things.

Those things can be the, the, the kind of the thing on the, the cherry on the top that really makes it go boom.We’ve got to be careful that that doesn’t become the main way that we do evangelism and it doesn’t distract our people from the essentiality of of, you know, meeting with others and so on and so forth.

But yeah, I’ve got no major objection to them so long as they don’t distract us from what I think are the main things, which is weird.Plus time, plus people.Yeah, Yeah.So it sounds like what you’re saying there is that, yeah, they, they can be good, I guess a catalyst, good, good additives.But there’s probably not what you want to have as your main diet, so to speak, of doing your advantage, like running that evangelistic, uh, conversion engine.

Is that right?Yeah, totally.But I’ve gotta say, yeah, if I, if I can go on, I’ll just say of all the things that are dangerous in the world of evangelism.And when I say dangerous, I mean that can distract people from the main business.

I mean the the online book, whatever thing that’s not in the top 100, you know, sure thing that distracts most people from effective evangelism at church is doing ineffective evangelism.And by ineffective evangelism, what I really mean is evangelism which doesn’t proclaim the gospel.

So pre evangelism or evangelism which proclaims the gospel in a drive by shooting method.So people don’t get a chance to really enjoy the taste or get used to it.Or evangelism, which is entirely, here’s the big one, and evangelism which is entirely reliant on Christians having to be bold enough to do solo personal 1 to one evangelism.

Now, the reason that’s an effective strategy is because most Christians will simply never do it.They won’t do it.So that means we’re missing all their non Christian contacts because we’re depending on our Christians meeting up one to one with people to to read the Bible.

Now, I’m not saying we don’t want them to do it.Of course we urge, we want them to do it, but I think we need to be realistic and go, OK, so that doesn’t happen the way that it may only be campus.So what do we do?Well, we lower the bar for them to come into evangelistic activities, such as being a table leader at a course or bringing a friend to a course or to a church service.

And we start to engage them evangelistically that way.The Christian, I should say.But I think those things are far, far more dangerous and distracting in the sense that most churches I know who are overly fixated on pre evangelistic activity, yeah, have very, very poor evangelistic activity.

So they tell a joke without the punchline.So it’s true.They they build the bridge without actually crossing it.So I think one of the things that we’ve got to keep coming back to is that evangelism is actually the Speaking of the message.It’s not, it’s not all the other bits and people like it is actually a proclamation of the message that God has given to us to provide.

Yeah.It is just Speaking of the message, but it can also be the reading of a message.Sure it.Can be the reading the message.That’s the thing, I think so, yeah.I’m, I’m with you though.Can I just say that I think we want to make sure that our people are stretched and are and that we’re encouraging people to take risks and to to Rico Tice has got a wonderful book, honest evangelism.

He talks about the pain line view that perform panel.Yeah, there’s there’s a Payne, the Payne lines scene, but also a pang line for most of us is even the beginning of any conversation.I’m pretty encouraged if anyone bold enough to send anyone an evangelistic anything, I think you’re doing pretty well.

But we, we just wanna make sure we do that.That’s not the be all and end all, but that’s part of our, it’s like Avengers of conversations.That’s part of a bigger conversation.You don’t hit and forget, fire and forget, you know, but you keep it going.I think that’s my big fear with the online presentations.And sorry, I’m going to have a lot of a lot of my old ministry trainees who are just laughing right now because I used to have an exercise of what would online church look like.

And this was like 1020 years ago.And I actually had one text me when we went into lockdown and went, I suppose you’re pretty happy now because we’re all going into online church and went, actually I’m not.And so I’ve actually kind of stepped back a bit from the whole online ministry.And one of my fears with online gospel presentations is it’s very easy to go, here’s a gospel presentation.

I’m just going to sort of throw it like a grenade and then run away.Now it might be as I think what you’re saying is for some people, that’s a sort of a step towards them becoming bolder and bolder.But my fear is if that’s where we leave things, that people just don’t grow and they don’t realise actually there’s a great joy in proclaiming the gospel, even though there can be some opposition along the way.

So they miss out on that, that that great blessing.Yeah.Yeah.You you removing the people part of your equation.Yeah, yeah.Do you feel the same about books?Well, yeah, I, I think I, I, this is hard because for me personally, I, I’m a reader and so I love talking to people about books.

So if I find a good book, I will give it to someone.And then what do you think and what do you think of that chapter?What do you think?So I think it’s part of the following up, but I think the same danger could be there for someone to go here’s a book, go and read it and we’ll never talk again kind of thing that that’s my fear.As I I, I just want to everything you said and the same also, by the way, about the dangers of it’s funny, if people from my old church, we’re hearing me advocate online anything, they’d laugh.

Sure.I can’t stand it, you know, but I wanna say God uses, you know, a donkey.And so in essence, I think the danger with everything is distraction in this film.And and so that we wanna make sure we keep the main thing.

The main thing.The main thing is the message that we say that we’re doing that.Then we think about how we are actually effectively engaging with non Christian people.And also that the second successful thing we’re looking for in evangelism is the training and equipment of our people, not to win the lost primary only, but also secondarily for their sanctification.

So they become energy.So we want them involved in it and I think having a lower bar of entry into that world is essential to doing that.But I don’t think that that lower bar should be sent a link or give a book.I think it should be on the ground in a room with non Christians where you’re bringing them and you’re able to chat to your friend you brought as you go to and 4th or whatever that is.

So just that sort of engagement in the actual activity is a thing that will embolden people and set people free to, to, to continue to grow in it.Whilst at the same point going, Hey, the Internet and books and podcasts, these are things which nowadays, thankfully, we can almost produce for free all of those, you know.

And so we’d be, I think, I think if we can do them without getting distracted, we should.Talking your books, I do want to get into your book.You you’ve actually written a book and you can judge a book by its cover in this.It’s it’s literally what is a Christian and it’s only cover.

It is it’s short, it’s 52 pages.What I really loved about it is it doesn’t muck around.Some books, evangelistic books like go, Oh, I’d be cautious about giving this to some of my neighbours because unless you are at a certain intellectual level or reading level or you’ve read these kind of people, you, yours actually kind of goes, you don’t make people feel stupid.

And so I’ve got some non reader kind of guys in my life.They go, I actually, I could easily give this book to them, but there’s lots and lots of is that why you wrote like, why did you write this book?Because there’s a lot of books out there that explained the gospel.Why did you why did you write this one?Thanks Pete and thanks for those kind words.

I wrote this book not to be particularly an evangelistic book, but rather to be part of the evangelistic journey that people would take.And I’ll explain how in a moment.But but yes, the audience for the book, in essence, I mean, Australian context is to understand completely that 75% there or thereabouts of Australia haven’t been to university and most people are not readers.

And you know, and, and, and yet in the evangelical context that we live in, that’s flipped, you know, 75% of of us have been university and so on and so forth.So so that means a a bunch of evangelistic resources are really targeted at people with university degrees, people with PHD’s, even people apologetics and any number of things where they have to engage themselves great deeply about philosophical things.

And yet that’s actually not the majority of non Christians I’ve ever met who are thinking those things.So in essence, the book came about because of desperation that I really wanted to have something that I could give to non Christian people at church on Sundays.That was a clear explanation of the Gospel that actually wasn’t the assum total of hey, here’s where evangelism wins and ends.

I’ve gotta be honest with you people.I don’t know if it’s a very good book or not.To be honest, it is.I’m not as far as, as far as authors go, I’m, you know, yeah, I’m a bald Barber, you know, I’m, I’m not a very good author.But the whole point of it was to be, hey, what can I give to a mate of mine who isn’t a reader?

But if he did read or she did read that this could be really, really clear.So I took it from a just the basis of the evangelistic conversations that I have with people and tried to put that into words.Now, the way that it’s most commonly utilised and the way that I would encourage people to utilise the book is firstly for church pastors and ministers and leaders in a welcome bag, you know, and or a welcome table that in essence, we’ve we’ve printed the book to look quite nice, but it’s attract, you know, but we’ve printed it with a kind of mini firm cover and done the design properly so that they won’t easily throw it out like you might do with attract.

So that we’ve got that going on.That’s kind of hopefully there that you can pop them in the welcome bag.It’s just there.It’s a little thing feels a bit nice or an evangelistic course, giving them one, whatever it is as part of something else going on.But of course, the other part is, I reckon just to have it, that if you’ve got a Christian.

So I’ve got a parliament by my front door.And if we get woollies delivered or we have a, you know, whoever, you know, someone comes, I’ll go, oh, he’s a little thing I wrote.There you go.Yeah.And it’s a bit of a fire and forget because I’m never gonna see this person again on this man, you know.But this is something that I think, well, this contains all the essential information I think someone needs to become a Christian.

So I’d like you to read it.And at the end of it, it says, hey, the best thing that you can do is read the Bible for yourself and find a local Bible believing church.Now it does.I, I can’t really send people to specific churches at that point, but that’s the whole point of it, I guess.Yeah.Yeah, yeah.Have you, have you got any stories where you’ve seen the book particularly being effective?

Yeah, I hear stories from time to time of right that, you know, in fact, yeah, month or so.In fact, the Reach conference not that long ago.Yeah.It was really encouraging to meet several people who said people at their churches have become Christians reading it.But in essence, my names on honour and I don’t have a contact.

There’s no contact details on the book because I don’t want it to be about like, firstly, what non Christians heard of David Jensen.No one.Well, Christian Judaism, no one.I really don’t want it to be about while this is, you know, blah, blah.And his opinion.

I just wanna and I said there’s no personal anecdotes, illustrations in it.There’s nothing like.That.No, it’s not.Yeah.Yeah, it it’s just deliberately just meant to be so that your church can have it.It’s almost like your church had put it together.So yeah, I mean, I hit.So I’ve heard one or two stories on more.

Well, I’ve heard a few stories of people becoming Christians reading it.But more than that, the most encouraging thing that I hear about brother is I’ve heard a bunch of stories of people giving it to people.And then, yeah.Well, in God’s sovereignty, you know, we pray that it’s a useful part of that as part of a bigger evangelistic journey involving people and time and Word and so on and so.

Forth Hmm, Yep.Alright, Dave, we’re kind of getting to the end.We need to get to we need to kind of wrap things up, but is there, give me one thing that’s the most important thing about a gospel presentation as as pastors, churches, people are thinking about this.What’s the one thing you want to make sure people understand about a good gospel presentation?

The Gospel is the power of salvation.If your evangelism doesn’t contain the information necessary for someone to become a Christian, it’s not evangelism.And that means prioritising that part of your evangelistic strategy, the part where it’s the the gospel presentation that needs to be the first thing.

Don’t plan your other things first or your pre evangelism.You’re this, no, no, where are you as a church?Where are you as a Christian?Where are you presenting the gospel?Where are you hoping to see people converted and focus on that.And then in 20 years time you can think about the other things, but just do that one main thing first.

Excellent in the toolbox.We’ll actually we have a link to Dave’s book.You can get it from the NC officers.I think that’s right.For you can go go online, you can order it online ministries.org, then we can send it to you don’t have to come in to get it.

Peter No 1986, But nonetheless, there you go online.And three bucks.So it’s it’s we try to keep it as cheap as possible and so that you can get it into people’s hands.And we’ll also put some other things in there that Dave’s done and written for us.Especially there’s a great ebook that he’s done on helping your church think through a great mission culture that is there.

Dave, once again, always a pleasure to chat.Thanks for joining us.Thanks, Pete.Thanks guys.I’m Pete Hughes, chat soon.