Today, it seems that many pastors and denominational leaders are dumbing down, suppressing and watering down the gospel for fear of offending someone, or causing someone discomfort over their sinful lifestyle. God forbid that Jesus had taken that attitude.

If Jesus had been worried about offending anyone He would most likely not preached on the Beatitudes found the Gospel of Matthew. He would not have preached to the people about their sin and the coming judgment. He would not have tangled with the religious leaders of His day about their about their backslidden and hypocritical lifestyles

Today I am hearing of the true Christ followers found in every denomination who are resisting the liberal direction or the decisions to implement ungodly actions that violate God’s laws, guidelines and boundaries for godly and holy living.

Christ followers from the Episcopal Church left when the denomination ordained a homosexual priest. This group of men and people are planting churches near college campuses and are preaching the gospel to college students who are desiring a more liturgical service.

Christ followers from the Lutheran church like the group from the Lutheran Hour are making parade floats proclaiming God’s Ten Commandments and a message of eternal life as a promise from God for all who believe in Jesus.

God is not concerned about any particular denomination. He is more concerned about a people who will take Him at His Word and evangelize, witness, share the good news, proclaim Jesus to a world without Christ that is headed for a literal hell Luke 16:19-31.

God has been known in past history to have used a denomination that was seeking to obey and follow Him. He has used several to proclaim His message and do His work. But when the denomination lost sight of God’s plan, God’s vision and their plan and vision became the “main thing” it is as though God removed His hand off them, and they became just another denomination with no real impact for God’s kingdom and not reaching the lost.

What the American church needs today is a man in the pulpit who is more concerned about doing God’s will, preaching God’s Word, evangelizing the lost and not so concerned about politics, or the 

What the American church needs today is a man in the pulpit who is more concerned about doing God’s will, preaching God’s Word, evangelizing the lost and not so concerned about politics, or the prominence or prestige.

We all need to ask God to break our hearts for Him. We all need to repent of our selfish desires and selfish ambitions. We should seek to be last and not first. I believe if we do not begin a movement of repentance and desiring God more, in the very near future, our country could be under the Islamic rule and our children’s children might be worshipping the god of a false religion.

Why do I say this? The followers of Mohammed are more committed than the average church member. Children of this religion are encouraged from a young age that to die for their faith is a sacrifice to their god.

Most Christians instead teach their children not to go to the mission field whether in the city or in another country for fear of being killed for their Jesus. I am not saying we should raise our children to be martyr’s. But are we teaching that it could mean that you might have to die for your faith.  

What we need is more committed evangelistic Christians who are not ashamed to tell someone about Jesus Christ. We all need to say, “Send me Lord Jesus”, “Use me Lord Jesus”.

I want to be used by God in whatever group of Christ followers are serious about obeying God and proclaiming Jesus to lost people. Evangelism is about obedience and living holy.

An Excerpt from the book “Breaking The Evangelism Code” by Dr. Victor H. Benavides

Now available at crossbooks.com, amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com

The Great Results

The gospel has great results when Christ’s followers are obedient and tell lost people about Jesus in a Christ-like manner (I want to emphasize the Christ-like attitude when we witness). I was a member of a small church running around two hundred that was not practicing visitation or followup. Th e church was not accustomed to seeing many adults saved, mainly children. Once the church began a visitation ministry, the number of adults being saved increased. For every three home visits made, one adult came to faith in Jesus.

Scripture reveals when Jesus’ followers proclaim the good news in the power of the Holy Spirit, the probability of individuals responding to the gospel such as we read in Acts 2 can become a reality. It is recorded that hundreds of individuals repented or turned from their sin after Peter preached and gave an invitation to trust in Jesus by faith. Th en three thousand people were baptized that day.

Scholars have written that the number who trusted in Jesus is greater than the number recorded because of the cultural practice of only recording men. Th e number does not reflect the women and children who also responded to Peter’s invitation.

Today numbers from evangelistic movements are still being recorded as a result of evangelistic preaching in churches by such men as Dr. Johnny Hunt of the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia. On one particular Sunday morning in three worship services, I was present when a total of seventy-fi ve people trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, even though it was not a planned “crusade.”

Let me clarify that Dr. Hunt is a personal and intentional soul-winner and evangelistic with every gathering of people. At every event where people gather He consistently off ers the gospel. Th e Holy Spirit was expected to work in the hearts of the congregation because of the ongoing prayer ministry and preparation conducted. There is a great degree of expectation on the part of Dr. Hunt and the church to see God work in their services. Th e prayer ministry is evidence of the ministry’s intentionality to see God work.

Could it be that the reason why many churches are not seeing a movement of God during their services might be due to the fact that they are not expecting God or the Holy Spirit to show up? The lack of preparation, whether it is not having a prayer ministry, trained altar counselors, materials to give to decision makers, or a decision room, might be evidence that a church does not think the Holy Spirit will show up at their service or events.

There may be more prayers lifted up in hell by people who are crying out to God to someone to tell their loved one and friends about Jesus Christ

Old Testament Evangelistic Invitations

Invitations in the Bible were most always public announcements that required a public response. With very few exceptions, God called followers publicly, and He  still calls today in a public manner. The prophets of the Old Testament preached publicly and gave public appeals to their listeners that required public responses. Prophets such as Moses, Joshua, Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Amos, Malachi, and others gave public invitations for people to follow God.

Th e fi rst evangelistic appeal recorded in the Bible is in Genesis 3:9, where God publicly called out to Adam and Eve after they had sinned. He said, “Where are you?” Mankind had sinned and was separated from God. Because of disobedience, Adam and Eve had broken their relationship with God Almighty. As mentioned earlier, the Old Testament has a record of the prophets calling people to repentance and right relationship with God. Noah, while he built the ark, extended an invitation to those who mocked him and his sons. We can estimate that for at least seventy years, Noah extended an invitation to repent. Th e invitation lasted up to the moment “God shut the door” of the ark (Gen. 7:16). God kept giving the people opportunities to repent right up until the time He shut the door of the ark.

On one national news report a school district Representative stated that last year their district had 1,500 students who were homeless. In 2011 the percentage was higher. Not even are there elementary, middle school, and high school children who are homeless, there are students attending colleges and universities who are homeless. At a local university, a student asked for food and a place to sleep because he is homeless, even though he is a registered student and attending classes.

A real need that is hitting home literally is the increasing number of families who are becoming  homeless. Families are having to live our of their cars and in tents across our communities as fathers and mothers are losing their jobs. This is a real need that our churches can meet by assisting these struggling families.

Yes we need to start new churches, because some of the existing churches are doing very little to nothing to meet these hurting people’s physical needs as well as their spiritual needs. Is this what Jesus called self-righteousness? Hopefully the new churches will focus on meeting the needs of the homeless but what if they are only focused on reaching the middle class, or affluent or the millennial’s and follow in the foot steps of the existing churches? Then will these new churches be just like the established churches?

Christians have missed opportunities to minister in Jesus name over the years and lost opportunities to connect and reach their communities. Meeting physical needs is building a bridge to earn the right to share the Good News. Are the churches missing an opportunity to share Jesus by not starting more ministry centers that provide food, a hot meal, clothes, shelters for homeless families?

Starting a church is a good thing if its DNA has community ministry and evangelism built into it. The New Testament, primarily the gospels and the book of Acts has many examples of the New Testament church doing ministry internally and externally. Internally we are to help our church family. Externally we are to help the families with the intent of sharing Jesus with them and leading them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

In three or five years will the church look back the road it is currently traveling and realize that a great opportunity was missed? We may have many new churches across the country but in the meantime we will have missed a sector of people who had a great need and the church universal missed connecting and reaching them with the gospel.

In Breaking the Evangelism Code, author Victor Benavides helps Christians, including ministers and students preparing for the ministry, understand evangelism as it exists today. Benavides presents methods and approaches that have proved to be effective in sharing God’s Word. Missionaries have used these methods all over the world, resulting in hundreds coming to faith in Jesus. Evangelism is about obedience, which is about being holy. When people are obedient to God, they become more holy; when they are disobedient by saying no to evangelism, people are living an unholy life. Breaking the Evangelism Code will help those concerned share the Word and lead people back to God.

“Jesus Christ said, “¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.”

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the One who we owe our very lives to, commanded His followers to tell the world about Him.

The world is in desperate need of a spiritual awaking. The Church is in desperate need to wake up and become the evangelistic organism that God intended the church to be, evangelizing the lost world. God has empowered the church to be able to carry the gospel out into the communities ofAmerica. The church has all it needs to see God turn this world upside down, if only God’s people would repent, be obedient and begin witnessing.

The church has fallen for the devil’s lie that evangelism does not work. What a better lie to promote! He could not stop the church from doing evangelism by persecution. So he did the second most effective thing, tell the church that evangelism does not work anymore. The church today lives as though the gospel is powerless and acts as though the gospel is in some type of code.

The church appears to be in a state of confusion and stumbling around as though intoxicated by some cheap wine or fermented drink that the devil has concocted when it comes to evangelism. The church seems as though it is in a thick fog and acts as though the gospel is in some type of cryptic code, needing to be solved before it can tell the world about Jesus.

While the church struggles trying to discover a new approach or grasp which evangelism approach or which method works best, the world is going to hell on jet fuel. The declining church continues to listen to some of our leaders and individuals, whom we have deemed as the experts, who fan the flames of disillusionment and gospel-phobia, while the devil is running havoc on our families, our marriages, our churches, and communities. He continues to lead many lost people to an eternal fiery hell while we sit around trying to figure out how to grow the church without going outside of our walls or leaving our soft pews to do intentional evangelism.

Evangelism is the good news that the world needs to hear. The message of the gospel is that God set up a road block to hell, it is called the cross. It is all about the cross. Jesus died on a cross so we would not have to pay for our sins in an eternal fiery place called hell.

Salvation is available to all who believe. It is free to all who want to receive it from God. It is not cheap for it cost God His only Son, Jesus and it cost Mary her first born son. It is not cheap because it cost Jesus His life and the agony of taking on all of our sins that separated Him from the Father.

How you can unleash the gospel by using proven methods used by missionary evangelist across the nation and globally.

We learn from reading God’s Word how He works so when God is working around us, we will be able to recognize the activity of God and join Him. Experience God

Turn your worry, anxiety, concerns, troubles into prayers. You will get more out of taking these to God than you dealing with them. Victor H Benavides

With training in each of those four areas implemented over a 12-month period, the ICE strategy culminates in a week or weekend of witnessing saturation in a chosen target community. Typically, teams of 2 or 3 individuals engage people in evangelistic conversations.

A weekend spent street witnessing or sharing at a block party usually produces several people who trusted in Jesus Christ. The training will strengthen church members in discipling and mentoring new believers. Equip aggressive soul-winners in the ICE approach and develop your own ICE team.

Interested? Call for information about manual and training resources. 

When you’re ready to implement ICE, contact us (770-500-8999) or evangeman@comcast.net for a consultant. Resources are available for purchase by CD or by individual resources. Just let us know about your plans.