We want to make sure that a gospel presentation is accurate and effective, so what makes for a good gospel presentation? Dave Jensen is from Evangelism and New Churches in Sydney.

Dave talks about:

  • Three key ideas to make a good presentation.
  • Three key components to effective evangelism is God’s word, people and time. This means some presentations work better than others.
  • This means that some presentations are more effective than others – online presentations might be efficient, but not effective.
  • There are presentations that can distract us from effective evangelism.
  • Evangelism is not just for the benefit of non-Christians but also for the growth of Christians.
  • “What is a Christian?” is written for those who may not be great readers

TOOLBOX:

CREDITS:

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TRANSCRIPT:

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

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.

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