 All right, welcome back. So let's go to the next chapter, the evangelist restoration of the ministry of the evangelist. Now, this is a more of a practical chapter that what I'd like each one of us maybe to do is whenever you're free, choose any one evangelist, read about him, see how his ministry was. Now, even as you do this, there will be, you know, many, many a times the, you know, the people who we study about, they may have failed in certain areas in life, right? So there are instances where God has used people greatly, right? They've been doing, they did a wonderful ministry, but they failed in the area of looking after their family, or they've done wonderful ministry and they failed in their marriage, right? It was a broken marriage. Why? Because all the time they were in ministry. So, so what I'm trying to get at is you can probably choose any one person, read about him, but take what is important to learn about their lives, be encouraged with their life as well, so that, you know, it'll help us, right? And learning from their lives is good, but also learning their failures is good because we can avoid those failures, right? So let's look briefly at the restoration of the ministry of the evangelist. Now, after the book of Acts and after all the apostles and the disciples were martyred, the ministry obviously went on and we don't know much about who took on the roles of leadership, but we do know that there was Eusebius, there was other people who became leaders in the church after a while and let's look at a few of them, right? Eusebius was the earliest church historian, right? Occupying the first steps in succession of the apostles. Now, what did he do? He set on on a journey from home to work as an evangelist. He preached the word of God in places where the gospel was not reached, right? And he used faith as his most powerful tool to bring out the ministry. And if you do a study about his life, you know, he was a man of extreme faith, just like, you know, many years later we see John G. Lake also. He was a man of extreme faith and Eusebius was one of that, right? Whenever he went, he demonstrated extreme faith in God and he journeyed to many places. He came, he journeyed to India as far as India being an evangelist to the word. The ministry of the evangelist is again evidenced after that by many other, you know, groups of, you know, groups of ministries, right? So for example, the Hussites, the Lolads, the Puritans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians. Now, when we study church history, we'll see that there were a lot of groups that were, you know, that came up during the early church, right? But in all these groups, we don't see any of them saying, no need to preach the gospel. The gospel itself will come to everyone. We don't see that. All these groups had one thing in common. You have to go and preach the gospel. Now, whether it's right or wrong, that is secondary, but they had one thing in mind. Go preach the gospel. They all were involved in the work of the evangelism, right? And so when we look at this, later on in church history, we see George Whitefield, right? Who was across the Atlantic Ocean 13 times. He would preach from between 5,000 to 50,000 people. Now, George Whitefield was a contemporary of John Wesley, right? And he was known to be a man of, you know, whenever he spoke, it was like flames of fire would come out of his mouth. So it's wonderful to read about these men of God. You know, George Whitefield, even in his own house, in his room, it was said that, you know, as they were burying him, they saw two on his knees. His knees was, there was no knees. It was capped. It was just gone inside. And so they wondered, why is it like this? And then they, as they were cleaning up his room and getting rid of all the things, they saw two holes on the ground, right? And they realized that he had spent so many hours in prayer that eventually there were holes on the strong flooring. And that's why his knees were capped. He was a man of extreme prayer, right? And he did wonderful ministry, reaching out to many people, preached many gospels. Again, John and Charles Wesley dedicated their lives. But more than Charles, it was John Wesley who went from England to different parts of the world, right? During the 18th century, he traveled more than 200,000 miles, preached more than 20,000 sermons, went mostly by horseback, ministering to the Red Indians, the electorate, the poor, and also the elite, right? Those who are well advanced in knowledge. So we see that the ministry of the evangelists were restored by these great men and women of God in church history, right? And even now in a day and age that we are in, the work of the evangelist is never, never, never going to stop, right? Now, this is such an encouragement for us, right? It's not like, okay, this is done. We are over. Everyone can, you know, just relax, start something. No. The work of the evangelist will continue till his second coming. It will continue. And actually, if you read the book of Revelations, after that, after, you know, the rapture during the whole time of the tribulation, there's a great revival, right? One side, the enemy is doing all his work, right? Bringing, you know, all these plagues and diseases. And the other side, there's this world revival that happens. And God uses those two witnesses to, again, to reach out and touch many, many lives. So, until the last page, the book of Revelations, the work of the evangelist will continue, right? So, maybe what we can do is, I want to encourage all of us, maybe you can choose one person, right? Now, this is not an assignment and you're not going to get marked for it, but this is just going to encourage us, right? You can take your time, do a research about this person. You can choose somebody, study about him. And probably if you want to write it down, you can write it down. If you want to put it on a Word document and just go through it, go ahead and do that. But just choose an evangelist and look at his or her life. You can go up to even, you know, the this century, so no problem. But the point is, take in, you know, learn from their lives, right? Learn the good things, learn their success and learn from their failures as well, right? So, if any of you would like to share, maybe next month or the following month, you'd like to share the document or you want to share during the class, we leave it open so you can also share your thoughts as well. So, you can keep it a little bit interactive. Is that okay? Any questions? Is that okay? I don't think, oh, another assignment. Yes, Pastor. Right? It's not an assignment, right? It's just so that we can learn, right? We can all learn together. Okay, so let's move. I wanted to finish this chapter, chapter five, the practical keys to doing the ministry of the evangelist. The practical keys, right? Seven points. First one, follow the biblical pattern of the evangelist. Now, we read those verses in the previous class. What is the biblical pattern of the evangelist? To move from one place to another, ministering the gospel, reaching out to those who are lost. So, follow the biblical pattern, right? I remember this one preacher, one of my known pastor. This happened in North India. And I was talking to him and he said, you know what? I invited this very well-known evangelist to come and minister in my church. And do you know what happened? I said, tell me what happened. The evangelist, that person asked for five huge sum of money. I don't know if the others can relate to that about, but a huge sum of money to come and minister for one hour. This for an hour, right? A huge sum of money. And this pastor was shocked. He was shocked for two reasons. One, first of all, the Bible says that freely we receive freely we give, right? It's good to bless them. That is secondary. And two, he was shocked because there was no feeling of, you know, oh, I'm doing the wrong thing. I shouldn't be asking for it poorly, right? Just open about it. You have paid me so much, I'll come and minister. And as he was saying this, I remember this pastor, he teared up saying, he asked me one question. What is the ministry coming to? If now we are like this, what is it going to be 10 years from now? Right? But, you know, we just were discussing and we ended with prayer and he said, no, God knows. This is God's work. God knows what he's going to do, how he's going to do it. God is raising up faithful stewards of God who will bring the gospel in truth and power with integrity and honor. So we were encouraged, but we will see these discouraging things happening, right? Now, I'm not saying don't, you know, don't bless or don't ask for money, but there's a way to do things, right? Of course, we want to bless people, bless people in ministry, but demanding things like this is not right. What did the Bible say? You know, we read in Luke, right? When you go into a house, if they offer you anything, take it, right? Take it and have it. Be pleased with it. Bless them. If they don't, it's okay, move on, right? So that's a biblical pattern. What is the point? We are to reach out the gospel, right? So it's very important that we follow the biblical pattern of the evangelists. Two is develop the supernatural. Now some of us may say, hey, I don't know. I'm not flowing the gifts of the spirit. I'm still learning about it. That's all right. One thing we should learn is we develop the gifts of the spirit. We develop in the supernatural, right? Many a times, you know, we have conferences, we have weekend schools. Why do we have all this? Because we want to develop ourselves in the supernatural. There will be times when, you know, we have prayed over people. They've not received healing. Well, sometimes they've received healing, right? But we are continuing to develop, continuing to grow. Now the supernatural is not something which is a box, right? You can't put God in a box and say, okay, God, you work like this only. No, God can do anything in any way, any house. So the supernatural is a huge area that we can all develop in. So we develop, we grow. Now, what are some key points or key ways to develop in the supernatural? First, spend time in God's Word. Let God speak to you. Read and see how God worked miracles. Now, you know, I was talking to some of my, some people, you know, that I know, and they were saying, you know what, I'm going on reading the book of Acts, but seeing the supernatural and praying, but I'm not, you know, able to flow in it. So I said, you know, it's not only about reading it, it's about understanding it. What is their life? So I told this person, you go back, go read the life of Elijah. I said, Old Testament, yeah, yeah, read the life of Elijah. Did he do the supernatural? Of course he did. Read the life of Elisha. Did he do the supernatural? Yes. What about, you know, Moses? So you read their life. How did they develop? They didn't have the gospel. They didn't have the word. They didn't have all these, you know, the Holy Spirit to lead them every step of the way, meaning inside of them. Can you picture Elijah standing there on the mountain trying to, you know, he's telling the people one against thousands. He's telling them, now let's see who's God is a true God. That's a supernatural work of God. Supernatural demonstration of God's power. Elijah is telling Nehman, Nehman, you go, you dip yourself seven times and you'll be healed. So we're seeing all these things, right? We're seeing God working so beautifully. Thirdly, develop the ability to present the gospel in various audiences. Now, as an evangelist, we will get opportunities to minister to various audiences, right? So for example, you have the church, then you have people who are in colleges, youth, then you have teens. Now, if I'm talking to a set of youth or teens, I'm not going to be talking about marriage. How to love your wife and how to love your husband, they'll switch off, right? Say, hey, last night I'm not married yet. So I need to develop this ability to minister to them in the right way, right? Now, if I'm talking to a, you know, maybe a couple, an older couple, I'm not going to be talking about Instagram and Facebook. Then I'm not presenting the gospel in the right way, right? So I need to develop that ability. Now, the gospel remains the same, but how we portray it, it's up to us. How we, you know, present the gospel is up to us, right? And that is something which God gives, God puts on us, right? We must do it. We can't say, God, you know, give me the exact sentence and I will say that, no. Yes, we ask God, God, he does give us the wisdom. We'll ask questions, we will answer them and give us the right words, put the right words in our mouth, yes. But we don't say, God, give me the exact sentence that I should speak. No, God puts the onus on us. We have to, we know the gospel, we have to present it the right way. Right? So we need to develop that ability if it's true for working professionals. You know, you talk about something that they can relate to. Fourth one, maintain your passion for souls, very important. What is passion? Tell me, what is passion? I'm sure all of us have something that we are passionate about. What is the worst passion? Passion generally means love for something. Okay, very good. Thank you, Isaac. Yes, Lupega? A strong love for something that you don't feel okay when you don't do it. Yes, yes. Thank you, Lupega. I like that last sentence that you said. A strong love for something that you don't feel okay when you don't do it. You're so passionate about it. Anybody else? What do you think is passion? Yes, anyone else? Go ahead. Sid, Paul, any thoughts? Zilly, any thoughts? Yes, go ahead, Sid. So passion for me is something like in which you have interest and you have a great zeal for something. Okay, a great zeal. Like some people, they are having passion for music. They dedicate their whole life in music. Every time they have music in their mind and they're always trying to pursue that thing, they're always like, I want to make this beat, that tune, something like that. Yeah, thank you so much, Sid. Yes, very true. Something that they probably give their whole life for, right? That's nice. Zilly says a strong feeling or emotion for something, right? A strong feeling or emotion. Yes, that's right. So we all are passionate about something, yes? Now, if any of us are not passionate about anything, please pray and ask God to make you passionate about something because I'm sure you will be passionate about something, right? It could be anything. It doesn't need to be something super spiritual, right? I was speaking to one of our young teens from church, right? And as I was talking to him, he's probably about 9th or 10th standard. And as I was talking to him, this boy, talking, talking, and you know, what is he passionate about? He was passionate about knitting, right? And so what he does is he knits different, you know, images or different pictures of different kinds of things. And he's passionate about it. I was so surprised. And I really learned a lesson, you know, that day because sometimes we say, okay, guys should only like this or girls should only like this. No, God can put a desire or a passion, a burning desire regarding anything, right? And what he does is he, once he knits these things, he freely donates it to children's homes and he blesses the poor with it or, you know, it's just what he's passionate about. Now, here's the thing. Passion is something that we can also lose, right? Let me give you an example. How many of you have tried to learn an instrument and given up? Tell me. Jeffina has done that, okay. Sid and Anita, okay. You all have tried to learn an instrument. You're very passionate about it. So, hey, one day I want to play. That's how many you've given up, right? So what does it say? There is a possibility to, for us to lose passion about things. Now, one is, there are two things. One is it could be because naturally, we may just tend to say, hey, this is too much of a task. It's better I do something else. Naturally, we feel okay. Two is the enemy steals that from us, right? He steals that, especially with something to do with God, something to do with ministry, something that God really has put in our hearts. The enemy will come to steal that. So for example, maybe some of you are passionate about worship, right? Say, God, I am going to spend two hours in worship every day. You start off, say tomorrow I'm going to start, start day one, day two. By the time day five has come, oh, God, passion has gone. Nobody is there. There's no music. There's no instruments. There's no band. I don't feel like worshiping. The passion has gone, right? Now, the point here says, maintain your passion for souls. You have to maintain your passion. I have to maintain my passion, right? There will be times when we are pursuing what God has given us. There will be weakness. There will be weariness. There will be tiredness. You feel like, God, I just want to break. I want to break. I want to stop. But a passion is a burning desire, right? It can't just stop because you can't. You can't give up something because it's burning inside. But what Paul says, fan into flame, a passion for your name. So we have to fan it, no? We have to fan the flame. If we don't fan the flame, that flame is going to go off. We can look at a person and feel, hey, what is this person doing? Or we can look at the person and think, hey, is there a way that I can share the gospel with this person? Is there a way I can bring Christ into his life? How do I do that? Lord, give me a way. That's passion. Now, whether we do it or not, that is secondary. But that passion is still there. Lord, it's been five years, you know. I'm bleeding worship or I'm preaching the gospel. I feel so dry inside. We all go through those seasons, right? It feels so dry inside, Lord. You know, I'm just serving and ministering. But nothing's happening inside. Stop, pause and say, God, fan into flame, a passion for your name, a passion for your desire, right? Maintain that passion in everything, right? I remember this couple of weeks back, you know, I was a bit down and I said, okay, I'm not going to wake up today. I want to sleep. But, you know, when we have that passion, it doesn't matter what. I'm not saying I have all the passion. I'm just trying to say that there will be times. You know, you just want to, like, give up. But when we ask the Holy Spirit, Lord, help me to maintain that passion, that zeal for you. And he continues to do that for us. We are to maintain that. Say, God, give me that passion for souls. Give me the passion to do your ministry in the right way, right? Learn how to equip the saints in the ministry. I love what Apostle Paul says. Forget the worst, chapter and worst, but he says, you are my crown in heaven. The first time I read it, I thought, how can these people, I mean, who God has, Paul has ministered to, how can they be a crown? You know, I always thought, oh, Paul will come with his list of missionary journeys and all the wonderful things he did directly into heaven. No need judgment. Just go in, Paul, you've done the work. But Paul is saying, you are my crown. The people who were saved by the gospel through his preaching, through his ministry, they are the crown when he goes to heaven. So as leaders, we are to raise up leaders who are passionate about ministry. When ministering to a local church, submit to the leadership of the local pastor. Like I gave you that example, right? The pastor who called the evangelist, that's the wrong thing to do. Submit to the leadership when the pastor says certain things, gives you a certain time, submit to it, right? Be sensitive to the local church order, which means what? Now, when you go to ministered to different places, maybe in some churches you'll see the men at one side and the women at another side. Now, don't go there and preach and say, we are all one in Christ. You can all sit together. You don't have to do that, right? Or you may say, some of the churches may say, remove your footwear in common. Now, we are not to go there and say, that is for Moses, not for us, right? Or woman, you don't have to cover your head. It's okay. Just be normal. So we need to be sensitive, right? There are times when I've gone to certain churches, certain ministries, and these ministries don't believe in the Holy Spirit. They don't believe, meaning they don't believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and all of that. They believe that after the book of Acts, it's all stopped. But I went, they've invited me, I went, I preached, and I shared the gospel, right? I shared the true gospel. I shared about what the Holy Spirit does and some of them didn't like it. Some of them liked it. Some of them wanted me back to come and teach. Some of them didn't want me back, right? But the point is, I did not say, you're doing something wrong and I am right. Because when we point fingers, we are bad. That would be a bad evangelism strategy, right? When we are evangelizing, as evangelists, we have to say, hey, we are not perfect. We are also learning. But this is what I have learned from the gospel. This is what the truth of the word is. So being sensitive to the local church. Finally, as an evangelist, even as you decide to be one, be connected to a local church, right? There will be times when now when you're connected to a local church, that does not mean you share the gospel with everyone in the church and then tell them, okay, why don't you go here or why don't you? That would be, again, the wrong thing. So let me just put this book up. So I encourage each one of us to read this book, right? Divine Order in the Citywide Church. Maybe you already have. This is by Pastor Ashish. Read this book. It will really help you to align your thinking and what the church is all about. All right, so I think we'll come to a close. We'll stop here. We'll pick up from the next week. Any questions? Any questions? Anybody want to share your thoughts? Right. So I think the main takeaway is don't lose passion, right? Don't lose passion for God, for God's work and trust God that he will be able to, you know, lead you. Even through those hard seasons, through the good seasons, God is faithful. Amen? Right. So maybe one of us could close in prayer. Any one of us? Go ahead, anybody close in prayer. Yes, go ahead, Lephina. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this beautiful day and for the beautiful class we had. God, we thank you for calling us. We thank you for achieving this. Even you left the 99 and chased us down. And you have placed us right here with a great purpose and we thank you so much for that. Help us to never lose passion for you. Help us to always look into you no matter where we are God. Thank you for loving us and thank you for the beautiful class. Thank you for helping us to understand the role of evangelists and pastors and teachers. God, give us the boldness that we need so that we can go out and preach the gospel boldly. Be with us and guide us. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen, thank you. All right, thank you everyone. Have a good week ahead. I'll see you next week. God bless you all.