EIE M S
n focus In Asia
In the world
A publication of Evangelism Equipping Mission (Singapore) Oct / Nov 2009
REEAACCH NG
HIIN TH
GT E WO
HE OR LD
RL FO
DF R CH
OR HRRIISST
T
by Rev Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder of Evangelism Explosion
This is the sermon as delivered on January 29, 2006, at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Silas had come to Thessalonica to preach the Gospel. We read that
a group of “lewd men of the baser sort” cried out in great dismay
(now that’s quite a description, isn’t it, of those that oppose the
Gospel?) that “these that have turned the world upside down have
come hither also” (Acts 17:6).
Our theme today: “Reaching the World for Christ,” transforming
the world for Christ, turning the world right side up for Christ.
Now, some would say, “Wait a minute, preacher. That’s… a little
heavy, isn’t it? You know, I did manage to get to church today, and I
dropped a little something in the offering plate, and now you want me
to change the world?”
SPIRITUAL MULTIPLICATION
Yes! You can do it; we can do it. To wit: just in the last five years,
one of the ten ministries of this church succeeded in reaching 20
million people for Christ. Twenty million people won to Christ
through one of the ten ministries of this church: Evangelism
Explosion. By the end of this year, they anticipate that will be
twenty-five million. Two more years after that it will be fifty-one
million people. I am convinced that if you project a couple of
decades into the future, this church will have succeeded in bringing
more people to Christ than the entire Christian Church in 1,800 years.
Praise God!
That is through the biblical secret (not really a secret, but many
have not yet discovered it) of spiritual multiplication. That is the trick,
if you want to call it that, of winning the world for Christ. That is
what the world has been doing since Adam’s day. It has been
physically multiplying, hasn’t it, while the Church has been trying to
add? You can never catch up with multiplication by addition.
Therefore, it is vital that Christians learn how to multiply spiritually.
That is what we are engaged in doing and have been doing for
numbers of years here at this church, and it is getting more and more
exciting with each passing year. Well, we wanted to bring you up to
date on spiritual multiplication.
You say, “I’m not a preacher or an evangelist. I’m just a layman.”
It is interesting. I have never had anyone tell me he was a layman.
They are always “just” a layman. Well, let me tell you about a
layman. His name was Edward Kimball — just a layman. He did do
something in the church; he taught a Sunday school class for high
school boys. Not exactly a place where he is likely to make a huge
impact on the world. But he was doing the best he could, and after all,
he was also shy.
He noticed that one of the boys wasn’t doing very well in class. He
didn’t seem to pay much attention or make much progress, so
Kimball decided he would visit him at the shoe store, where he had an
afternoon job. He went to the store, but when he got to the door, he
chickened out. Do any of you fellas and girls know what that means
— chickened out? Sure you do. He just walked right on past the store.
He stopped, came back, walked past the door again, and again, and
again. Something said to him, “Wait until Sunday. You can talk to the
boy then.” Something else said, “No. Do it now.”
To Glorify God by Equipping Believers to Multiply In and Through Local Churches
CONNECTING
EQUIPPING
MULTIPLYING
Finally, the voice of conscience won out, and Kimball went in, and told
the manager he wanted to speak to the young man that worked there. He
was told, “He’s in the storage room in the back, getting the shoes ready to
be put out on the shelves.” So he went back there. I am sure the boy was
startled to see his Sunday school teacher there, but they talked, and
Kimball shared with him the Gospel, one on one, and this young man
accepted Christ.
Did that make much difference? The young man’s name was Dwight
L. Moody —probably the greatest evangelist America produced in the
nineteenth century. His ministry gave rise to the Moody Bible Institute,
the Moody Broadcasting Network, Moody Monthly magazine, and
thousands of missionaries went out to the mission field through the
ministry of Dwight L. Moody.
Moody went to England to preach, and there he came across a young
man by the name of F. B. Meyer, who also became a great preacher of the
Gospel. Meyer came to America. He preached in Moody’s school in
Massachusetts.
When Meyer preached there, he had a tremendous impact on J. Wilbur
Chapman, who was converted about that time through this group. He
became a great evangelist. When he retired from his evangelistic work, he
turned the ministry over to a professional baseball player (Isn’t that what
you would do if you were a preacher?) His name was Billy Sunday, and he
became one of America’s outstanding evangelists. Many thousands came
to Christ through him. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina, and
conducted a great evangelistic meeting and a number of people were
converted there.
A group of the men who were converted there decided to form an
organization and have their own crusade. This they did, and in 1932 they
invited Mordecai Ham to speak — not a well-known speaker who had an
unusual name. He preached at this crusade in Charlotte. There on the last
night of the crusade, during the singing of the last stanza of the last hymn,
a sixteen-year-old boy heard the Gospel and went forward and accepted
Christ. I am sure you know who that was. His name: Billy Graham. Tens
of millions of people have come to know Christ through him.
It all started with a Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, whom
most people never ever heard of.. The Bible says, “And they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).
Well, we have a lot of stars here on earth. We have movie stars and
rock stars and basketball stars and all the rest — most of them are
shooting stars or falling stars — but Kimball will shine forever, because
he certainly was responsible for bringing many to righteousness.
You can be a star, too, by turning many to righteousness. It doesn’t say
you need to be a preacher or an evangelist or a missionary. You can
simply be “just” a layman, but a layman that is concerned to win lost
people to Christ. I think one of the greatest needs in the Church today is
for concerned Christians. Are you one? I would hate to say it, but it is
probably my considered opinion that the majority sitting in front of me are
not. Were you concerned last week enough to tell anybody about Christ?
Many of you didn’t. We need concerned Christians.
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 I think of April 1964. Do you remember what you were doing then? In
New York City, a young lady was coming home late at night from work.
She entered the vestibule of her apartment building and was accosted
there by a man with a knife. He slashed her across the face. She screamed
at the top of her voice. He slashed her again, and again, and again. She
pleaded at the top of her voice, “Somebody please help me! I am dying! I
am dying! Please, somebody help me.” Nobody came. The man slashed
her again and again and again and again and again. It took 30 minutes for
her to die.
That, of course, was on the front page of every newspaper in America.
You may remember her name, Kitty Genovese, that dear lady who
couldn’t get anybody to listen to her or anyone to come to help her, and
she finally died. Eventually, the police came and checked it out. You say,
“Surely, nobody heard her in this big apartment building.” It would be
nice to think so, but the facts showed that 38 people heard her. They had
looked out of their windows, saw what was happening, and what did they
do? Nothing! They didn’t go down to help her. They didn’t call the
police. When asked why not, they said, “We didn’t want to get involved.”
They were totally unconcerned. So Genovese died a terrible death.
GET INVOLVED
You ask, “How could those people be so hard hearted as to not do
anything — not even call the police?” My friends, people are dying all
around us every day, every week, every month. We pass them on the
streets, we meet them, we greet them, and usually we just go on our way,
because we are really not concerned enough to do anything; we have our
own things going on. But there are people who will take a lot more than
thirty minutes to die. They will take 30 billion, trillion centuries in
Hell. We could save them if we shared the Gospel with them, but we are
just not concerned.
I thank God for the many right here who are concerned. I would that
their number would multiply greatly. What a wonderful thing it is to be
the one used by God to bring the Gospel of salvation to some person
who, like all of the rest of us, is dying.
Every one of us has the responsibility of being a witness for Christ.
Every last person that names His name as Savior and Lord has been told
by Christ to go and preach the Gospel and share the Good News with
everyone on earth. I hope that you have been and are being just such a
witness as that.
A number of people have said to me, as an excuse for not witnessing
(we are really very good at making excuses), “Well, I can’t talk about
religion. I just witness by my life.” Now, I am all in favor of witnessing
by our lives, but it doesn’t work with the Gospel. That is not how people
are converted.
The Gospel is a message that needs to be proclaimed. The apostle Paul
said, “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which
also ye have received…”(1 Corinthians 15:1) Christ died for our sins; He
was buried and rose again from the grave the third day. No. We can’t just
be Christians and live a nice life and expect that anybody is going to go
to Heaven because of that.
I remember one time a friend of mine in the ministry was debating a
man who believed in what he called the “theory of a voiceless
Christianity.” He probably could have talked you into joining his church
pretty easily — at least some of you who want a voiceless Christianity —
just be nice and all will be well, and people will flock into the kingdom.
But the Christian minister debating him disagreed, and said, “That’s
not the way it works. You can’t just live a Christian life, because the
Gospel is a body of knowledge that must be taught and understood.”
There is no “voiceless Christianity.” The Gospel is Good News, and it
has to be told if people are going to get it.
Or suppose you are walking down your street at about ten o’clock at
night. You notice smoke coming out of the back window of your
neighbor’s house. You say to yourself, “Good grief, my neighbor’s house
is on fire, and that is his daughter’s room where the smoke is coming
from. I had better scream at the top of my voice saying, “Fire! Fire! Your
house is on fire.”
Then you say, “If I do that, people will come out and see me, and they
will think I am some kind of a fanatic, a lunatic. Why, they might call the
police on me. No. I’ll do this. I will go home and get down on my knees
and pray and somebody will take care of it.” That is not what you would
do. You would scream “Fire!” at the top of your lungs; you would go to
the front door and bang on that door and cry “Fire! Fire! Fire!” until
someone opened the door, and went and got the little girl out of her room.
Why would you do that when you pass and have passed thousands of
To Glorify God by Equipping Believers to Multiply In and Through Local Churches
people who are definitely going to die, and most of them without Christ
and in need of the Savior, and you don’t talk to them? I thought about
that for a long time, and then the answer came to me. You know why
we would go and knock on that door and not on others? The reason is,
my friend, we believe that the fire in that bedroom is real — but do you
believe that your neighbors, friends, and fellow workers are going to
the lake of fire forever? If you did, you would do something about it.
The flames are real, but unfortunately there is coiled in the soul of
many of us a serpent of unbelief that keeps us from responding to such
people.
Do you remember Aunt Sophie? She was a converted scrubwoman.
No initials after her name, except possibly S.W. for “scrubwoman.”
But she was a converted scrubwoman. She loved the Lord. She didn’t
have any education to speak of, but she did speak what she knew. She
told people everywhere about the love of Jesus Christ. Of course some
people laughed at her. They mocked her, especially one day when
someone saw her standing out in front (this is years ago) of a cigar
store witnessing to a cigar store Indian. In case any of you children
don’t know, it’s made out of wood. But she couldn’t see him well
enough to know that, so she just went on witnessing to him.
Somebody told her, “Well, you know, Sophie, someone said they
saw you witnessing to a cigar store Indian this afternoon.”
And she said, “Well, perhaps I did. My eyesight is not as good as it
used to be, but talking about Christ to a wooden Indian is not so bad as
being a wooden Christian and never talking to anyone about Christ.”
I’ll go with Sophie on that. How about you?
FEAR OF WITNESSING
Fear of witnessing is the other main reason why people don’t
witness. They are afraid of what someone might think about them. I
know, because that was a big hurdle for me to get over as a young
Christian, in spite of the fact that Jesus said in His final declaration,
“Ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:3). I didn’t, because I was
afraid.
There was another young man about twenty years old who also had
a big problem with fear. He was a Christian; he knew the Lord, but he
was afraid to talk about it with anyone else. It bothered him, like what
I’m talking about is bothering some of you. If that is so, I want to tell
you that I am so very glad, because that is precisely what I am trying to
do. But one day this young man said, “I am going to witness to
somebody for Christ today. I am not going to put it off any longer.”
Later he got on the bus to go to work. At the very next stop, a nice
looking gentleman in a three-piece suit got on the bus and sat next to
him in the seat. He noticed the man had tears coming down his face.
Then he noticed the man was actually sobbing, and he began to speak
out loud. The boy didn’t know if he was talking to him or somebody
else, but he was saying, “Oh God, Oh God, help me. I don’t know what
to do. My life is falling apart. Everything is crumbling in. Oh, if I could
only talk to you, God. If only I knew somebody that knew God,” and
he turned to this young man and said, “Do you know God?” What
would you say?
The young boy whispered a prayer and said, “Lord, if this is a sign,
then turn the bus driver into an armadillo.” Well, we all can find some
kind of excuse to put it off or not do it at all.
The Bible talks about one of the signs that people noticed about
Christians. Do you know what it was? “Now when they saw the
boldness of Peter and John . . . they marveled; and they took
knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). I am
sure that one of the reasons we don’t have the boldness we ought to
have is that we are not spending time on our knees with Jesus, because
Jesus gives boldness to people. He tells us to witness and He gives us
the boldness to be able to do it. I hope He has given that to you.
Dear friend, God has told every one of us that we are to be
witnesses unto Christ. That goes for you and me; that goes for this
week. I hope that God gives you the grace to witness and that He will
give you the power of His Holy Spirit to make it effectual; and that
God will use you to bring someone to Christ this very week. People
will take note of you that you have been with Jesus when they see your
boldness.
“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto
me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost.” – Matthew 28:18-19
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WH
HA T IISS EV
AT AN
VA NG EL
GE LIISSM
M HO
EXXPPLLOOSSIIO
ONN (EE)
• EE is not a program but EE is
equipping believers how to share
Gospel by providing skills of witnessing
as a way of life.
• EE has been proven, developed, tried,
refined, and revised, over a period of
more than fifty years.
• EE has been planted in all nations of
the world. Hundred of thousands of
believers have been equipped, and
literally millions have been won to
Christ.
• EE is an effective and down to earth
approach in a manner that is tactful,
non-threatening, easy to understand,
and hard to forget.
INN-HO
OU E TR
USSE RA NG
NIIN
AIIN GSS
XEE training was held at Light of Christ
Church Woodlands every Sunday from
2 August to 15 November 2009.
Youth EE training was held at His
Arrow Church every Tuesday night
from 1 September to 13 October 2009.
Youth EE Quick Start in prison ministry
was held every Friday from 9 October to
30 October 2009.
Youth EE training was held at Crown
of Glory Church from 26 – 28
November 2009.
NEEW
W ST
TA FF
AF F
EE Singapore welcomes
Shirley Foo who joined us on
November 2009 as our
administrator. Her role is to
assist the council by providing
administrative support for
EEMS. She has two grown up
sons, and also serves voluntarily at Good
Shepherd Centre during her spare time.
We also extend our fond farewell to Jenny
Oong who has served as administrator. We
thank Jenny for her service, and wish all the
best to Jenny.
Evangelism Equipping Mission (Singapore)
16 Newton Road, #02-208, Singapore 307995 / Tel: 65853911 / 62529337
www.ee.org.sg / eemsing@singnet.com.sg
OWW EE SIIN
NG AP
GA OR
PO RE
E
CA
C NH
AN EL
HE PY
LP OU
YO U
Evangelism is often NOT just taught, but
also CAUGHT.
EE provides TRAINING:
• 4-day Clinic to train the trainers
• Clinic is for KEY leaders and Pastors
• Equipped to train lay persons
• Instructs on theory and OJT (On-the-
Job Training)
EE assists in IMPLEMENTING:
• Provides trainers for OJT
• Assists in theory training
• Provides Field Implementation Worker
You may sign up to one of our clinics.
For more information about our clinics/trainings
and implementation (multiplication), please
contact Lion Soegiharto, IFW, at 91732318 or
email to sghlion@yahoo.com
EE SINGAPORE WISHES A BLESSED
CHRISTMAS AND AN EXCELLENT
SPIRIT-FILLED NEW YEAR AHEAD
UPPCCO
OM NG
MIIN G CL
LIIN CSS
NIIC
Adult (Chinese) EE will be conducted at Jubilee School
of Mission every Wednesday from 6 January 2010.
Youth EE Quick Start and Zoom will be conducted in
prison ministry on April – June 2010.
Youth EE (Youth EE is meant not only for youth but
also adult) will be conducted every Tuesday night 7.00-
9.30 pm from 19 January 2010 (Jan 19, 26; Feb 2, 9;
March 2, 9, 16, 23). Hurry up to sign up! Limited seats
available. It could be:
• The best investment for your eternity
• Broadening your vision
• Assigning you as a real “fisherman”
• Your Christmas or New Year resolution to
reach out your friends, relatives, associates,
neighbors, and strangers for Christ.
For more information about these clinics, please contact
Shirley Foo, Administrator, at 65853911 or Lion
Soegiharto, IFW, at 91732318, or sghlion@yahoo.com
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