Episode 84

Consider these startling findings by Ligonier Ministries’ biannual State of Theology survey of professing Christians:54% agree that religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth. 65% agree that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. Only 25% agree that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation. These findings may provide some insight into why a majority of professing Christians not only see soul-winning as optional, but also feel it is inappropriate to actively evangelize the world around us. In this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we sit down with Edward Thal and talk about soul-winning: what is it, and why should we care? Edward Thal has been actively soul-winning for over 30 years, has been on the mission field, and has organized outreach efforts for churches. May this episode spur us to fervent soul-winning and heartfelt love and obedience to Christ.

The biggest stumbling block for people with one on one. Soul winning is it is necessarily confrontational. When I meet a total stranger and at some point in my conversation, I have to break the news to this person that he or she is a sinner bound for hell if they don’t reconcile with his savior. That’s not a very comfortable conversation to have.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers Podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross. This is episode 84 of the Removing Barriers podcast, and in this episode, we will be having a discussion with Brother Edward Thal about soul winning and the Church. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and I know the same is true for Brother Thal. Brother Thal, welcome back to the Removing Barriers Podcast and thank you for joining us once again. Thank you. It’s good to be with you again. Great. And you can listen to Brother Thal’s testimony in episode 83.

Hi, this is Jay. MCG, and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to Removingbarriers. Net and subscribing to receive all things removing barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/Donate. Removing a clear view of the Cross.

All right, let’s get into it and let’s define the word soul winning before we start talking all about soul winning. But Atoll, how would you define soul winning or what is soul winning? It goes under different headings and different churches. Personal evangelism, neighborhood outreach, soul winning basic, it means going out into the community and sharing your faith with those who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as their savior to try to lead them to Salvation. And it’s done in various ways, but really it’s one on one personal evangelism.

What level of importance and priority should soul winning occupy in our churches? How important should it be? Far more important than it is at the moment. I’m always amazed how few churches actually promote soul winning, personal evangelism. Very few churches make any effort to reach their communities for Christ. The most common way of community outreach for churches who do emphasize so winning is to invite people to come to Church. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is I don’t see anywhere in scripture where in the Book of Acts people were invited to Church, they were invited to Christ, not to Church. The Church doesn’t save us. Jesus Christ saves us. So our use of words, I think, tends to be wrong at the outset. Having said that, I’ve got probably not a very mainstream view of the place of soul winning in the Church and the importance to the Church and the individual. And I can probably if you want a controversial start to this podcast, I can preface my remarks by saying that soul winning does far more for the individual soul winner than it does for the Church or for the people who are reached. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, going out knocking on doors, trying to reach people for Christ. And in 30 years I can count a handful of people who I’ve seen pray on their doorstep for Salvation. Now I’ve led many people to Christ, thankfully, but most of them have been from other contacts. For instance, a week ago family came to Church and sat right behind me. And I hadn’t seen them before. And I introduced myself and they told me it was their first time there. And I just took it as okay as an ideal opportunity to sell one. Before the service started, I asked them if they had a relationship with Christ, and they were vague about it. And I pressed him a little harder to try and find out if they had any experience of receiving Christ as their savior. The husband and the wife and the wife had a young baby in her arms. And they very soon told me, no, they didn’t really have that kind of experience. And so I said, well, could I come and visit you? And I’d love to talk to you about some more. And they say, oh, we’d love you to come. And so two days later, I visited them at their home, and the mom, the dad, and the eight year old daughter all prayed for Salvation. That’s a classic soul winning experience. But it didn’t come through going out into the community. The community came to us and they came to us because they were looking for a Church unsafe road past our Church, saw the sign and said, well, we may as well try that place. And then I believe by the Grace of God, they came and sat down right behind me. And that’s like straying a bone to a Bulldog. But if I look at the number of people in the 30 years that I’ve been doing this, and also my experience of other people in the Church who don’t have very much success with leading people to Christ on their doorstep, I’ve come to conclusion that personal advances and going out two by two into the community and knocking on doors like any good Mormons would do or good job as witnesses. And I tell people, why should they have all the fun, those people too. But the point I want to stress is I think the benefit is far greater for the soul than for the person we are reaching.

I couldn’t agree with you more, brother. I’ve been doing this not as long as you, but I tell you that I don’t think there’s any single activities. I don’t know if this should be the case, but this is the case for me. I don’t know if there’s any single activity that is more convicting and more challenging for me to make sure that my life is right with the Lord than when I have to go full winning. You’re absolutely right. When I am going out there, everything is going on me. Is my relationship with my wife in the right place? Is my relationship with the Lord in the right place? Is my relationship with my fellow brothers and my soul with a partner in the right place, because I want the Holy Spirit to work through me. And if I’m not right with the Lord, it’s not going to work. That’s exactly right. And by the way, do I know my Bible, Willy, enough to answer any questions that might come up? Oh, yeah, you don’t want to be embarrassed. And so that experience is and I urge people to be soul winners for that very reason. If you’re serious about growing spiritually, you really should be serious about going into your community and sharing your faith. And as you quite rightly said, I can’t think of any other activity that is more enriching, more challenging, more valuable to the individual Christian than doing just that. And yet it’s very difficult to get people to do it. And in a Church like ours, we have a wonderful Church, a growing Church, a Church where clearly the presence of God is manifest, as is testified to by the people who week after week coming there strangers looking for something and finding it with us, just like the family who I told you about, you sat behind me. So clearly ours is a spiritual body of believers who are serving the Lord as prescribed in scripture. And the word that preached from the pulpit is Bible based. We have no agenda. We don’t have any programs outside of exalting Christ, as I believe it should be. And yet even in a Church such as ours is a very good Church with wonderful families doing their best to serve the Lord and serve each other and raise good children, we have a hard time getting more than five or 10% response when we go out into the community. And unless I constantly exhort people and occasionally try to embarrass people by challenging them to come out, they’d rather be doing anything else on a Saturday morning or a Tuesday night than go and spend an hour or two knocking on doors and sharing their face with strangers. And it’s been that way for the last 30 years. So probably the best response I’ve ever seen from a Church was in my time at Temple, where we met back in those days, and we had a big Church there. And I think the biggest crowd of soul winners I had there was probably 35 people on a Saturday morning, which was wonderful, but it was exceptional in the sense that I’ve never seen that kind of response since. By the way, that was 35 people out of a congregation of 1000, right? So a really tiny number. And I’m not sure why that is, except of course, it’s something the devil fights very hard. The devil clearly doesn’t want people to get saved, and he’s going to fight tooth and nail to discourage people from going and sharing their faith. Yeah, I share that same frustration, but it blows my mind why Christine wouldn’t go out and so on. As you said, they will do everything else under the sun, including going and matching for the political cause. And they have no problem doing that. They have no problem going do to do on handing out political Flyers. They have no problem working hard in their place of business and for their own personal business. But for Christ, for soul winning, they always look for something else to replace it with. Yeah.

So the question begs, though, the Great Commission, as we know, is found throughout the Gospels. Yes. Do you think there’s an individual mandate for sale winners, because a lot of Christians believe that the Great Commission was given to the Church. And of course, I think the biblical evidence to show that the Great Commission was given to the Church. But do you believe there’s an individual mandate as well, individual Christians to go and solve them? Yes, of course. Who is the Church? The Church isn’t a building. The Church is a body of believers. So the Commission to the Church is two people in the Church, the individuals who make up the Church. So in fact, the Great Commission is to every single Christian. If you’re a Christian, you have a responsibility to share your faith with others. It’s not rocket science, and you should know how to do that. It’s essential that you know how to share your faith, that you know the very least, something like the Romans road four little scriptures that you can quote that will lead you in a logical progression to point people to the need for Salvation. Of course, there are many other scriptures you can use. But when I teach people how to share their faith, I try and keep it as simple as possible, not too complicated because it is difficult for them. And I think at the outset you’ve got to be committed to the idea of being a soul winner. And the commitment comes from feeling this is something God has asked me to do. And if I’m serious about walking with God, I’ve got to do it whether I like it or not. And so a long time ago, after failing miserably at it and being constantly embarrassed because I’d be confronted by someone who asked me a question I couldn’t answer or someone challenged me with the thought that I had no comeback for I finally sat down one day and thought, okay, this is something I have to do. So I better figure out a way to do it as well as I possibly can so that the next time I go out, I’ll be confident and it doesn’t matter who I meet, under what circumstances I’m going to be confident and well equipped internally to share my faith. I work rather hard at that for some time until I came up with a body of knowledge of scripture, of responses that I studied and was able, and I’m still able to go out and speak with confidence to anybody about Jesus Christ. And that’s a good feeling to have because there’s no circumstance I can imagine where I would be caught off guard because I’ve given it a lot of thought and a lot of work, a lot of study to this very subject. And I think if other people took it as seriously and just putting a little bit of effort, they would enjoy it as much as I do because it’s like playing tennis. If you don’t know how to hit a ball, you’re going to be embarrassed on the tennis court. It’s like all playing chess. If you have no idea that a Rook is different to a Bishop in the way it moves about the board, you’re going to make a fool of yourself. Well, it’s the same with soul winning. Learn how to do it, and then you’ll do it well and you’ll enjoy doing it. And most people don’t take the time to learn that. And so they’re embarrassed and they decide, well, I’m not going to try that again if it’s a disaster.

Yeah. The Bible does tell us to study to show our self approval to God. I needed not to be ashamed by the truth. If you talk about that, you know what comes to my mind. I remember I was sitting in a Bible doctrine class in College, and the professor said repeatedly that he wish one day that when we graduate and go into corporate world that we get embarrassed. He kept on saying that. I was like, why does he want us to be embarrassed? But he wants us to be challenged in our fate so much that we are given a question that we can’t answer and we’re embarrassed about it, and that will force us to go back and study and figure out how do we answer that question? And I think you hit the nail on the head, because I think a lot of Christians don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to be given a question that they cannot answer. And quite honestly, in my many years or so, when in most people that you meet out there, the average Christian or even the baby Christian, know more scripture than them. know way more scripture than them. But for some reason, they are afraid to go there because a lot of people go there. They don’t know the Bible, they don’t know scripture. The only thing you have to do, as you said, four little verses in the Roman road, and you have way more scripture than exactly. But you know, it’s not just the scripture that’s when you meet somebody and he challenges you with, how do you know the Bible is true? Or how could a God who says he loves you send anybody to hell? Or how dare you say anyone is a sinner? By what authority do you tell me that I’m doing something wrong? And unless you’ve got to come back for a question like that, you’re going to sort of sheepishly walk away saying, well, sorry I upset you have a nice day. By the way, when I meet somebody like that, I never tell them to have a nice day. I want them to have an absolutely miserable day because I want them to be convicted in their heart, that they need Salvation. Every door I knock and I tell myself that this happens every single time. The person I’m about to meet is one step away from spending an eternity in hell. And this might be their one opportunity to escape hell. It’s a Holy moment. It’s a vital moment. And so on the one hand, that gives me impetus to want to do it, but on the other hand, it makes me very careful about the way I go about doing it. And of course, that in turn, raises the issue that you need God’s help to do it. Nobody can study to the point where they don’t need the help of the Lord and the Holy Spirit to convey their faith.

As I said, I will come to my mind, and I’m going to try to make this story as short as possible. But I knock on the door of a Jewish man by the name of Erin and his wife, and both of them had doctorate degree in religious studies. And clearly this guy was way smarter than I was. He spoke more than Hebrew. He has a doctorate degree. And he was talking all these things about history and stuff like that. Thanks a lot for that College degree I have that I was forced to do that history class. So I was able to follow him a little bit. But you know what it came down to at that time, the Pope was in the US, and he said to me, what do you think about the Pope? By that time, brother, I was ready to go. I was so beaten up, I was ready to go. Yeah. And my soul with a partner for the first time trimmed in and said, I grew up Catholic. And for the first time, they took the attention off of me and to him. Yeah. And you know, myself when the partners are simply quoted, Ephesians two, eight and nine, and explain that Salvation is not by works, but by Grace, true faith. And you know, these people that have doctorate degree in religious studies look at us and said, wow, we have never heard it explained that way before. Yeah. Nothing profound, just a simple, unadulterated word of God. And they were wow by the gospel. Yes. Exactly what you’re saying. You don’t have to know that much. Yeah. You just have to be available for God to use you.

There is a remarkable story that I quote often. That’s true. In fact, I’m not going to mention any names, but you know this person from our time together back in Virginia, there’s a family in the Church, a lady and her husband. And they were newly married, unsafe. And I’m talking about this like 50 years ago, 60 years ago. And the lady, she’s dead now, but her son and his wife and their children are still faithful members of the Church. She told me the story of her Salvation, how she was newly Wed, her husband who was at work. She’s alone at home doing something in the kitchen. The doorbell rings and she opens the door. And there’s a young girl there, about 16 years old, with a look of terror on her face and didn’t know quite what to say and held out her hand and said, sure, take this. And put a track in her hand, turned and ran. Oh, wow. Oh, my. And the lady took this piece of paper into the kitchen and started reading it and thought, that’s incredible. She had a Jewish Lady and read it for a second time and then a third time, got on her knees and prayed for Salvation. Couldn’t wait for her husband to come home to share that with him. He got saved. When I knew there was 50 years, 45 years after that event, they were still soul winning. They’d raised a family of soul winners. They made a point of going out every single week as an elderly retired couple. Every week, they were trying to lead someone to Christ. And the point of the story is that 16 year old girl who someone had told maybe a Church, trained her a little and said, this is something you have to do. It’s required go out and tell people about Jesus. This might be the first door she ever knocked on. She was terrified, forgot all the things she was supposed to say, simply handed over the track and ran. And to this day, feels like a failure. And yet through that one faithful act of hers, she affected generations of people, and literally hundreds of people have been saved as a result of that woman first reading the track and getting saved. And the Ripper effect continues to this very day. So we just never know the impact we make. If we would just make the effort to go and try and tell people about Jesus, you never know what they think will be. And other than people think of themselves and their feelings. Just get over your feelings and go and tell somebody and leave the rest in God’s hands. And by the way, God will bless you for your faithfulness.

Let me ask you this, brother, because I tend to see this in a lot of churches where you have a lot of other ministries in the Church and these other ministries seem to be very popular. And soul winner is not being his rightful place. Where is the rightful place for soul winning in the Church? Is it just another Ministry, like a nursing Ministry, whatever, or should it have a little bit of an elevated place? It’s within the Ministry. I guess that’s open for debate as well. No. Yes. I don’t think of it as a Ministry. It’s a way of life like Christians read their Bibles, go to Church, say their prayers. They should also be soul winners. It’s part of your life as a Christian. And soul winning isn’t just one formal occasion in the week. If I travel on a plane, I’m always thinking to myself, the person who sits next to me may be sent by God to hear the gospel. So the wonderful thing about witnessing on an aircraft is the person you’re talking to has got nowhere to go for the next several hours. They stuck with you whether they like it or not. And so it really should be a part of your life. And I honestly don’t know. I’ve tried for many, many years to convince people the way I’m trying to convince your listeners now, but I haven’t been very effective at it. And I can only put it down to the fact that it’s the one area of the Christian life that the devil fights tooth and nail. He’ll do anything he can to discourage you.

A second pet peeve of mine, that was my first one. The second one is a lot of the problems begins in Bible College, where we train pastors or seminaries. And this is a beef I’ve had for a long time, and I don’t know that it will ever be resolved. But when you go to seminary or Bible College, you are trained in various areas and you are examined in various areas and you have to pass at a certain level. And then you get a piece of paper that says you’ve graduated from XYZ Bible College or seminary, and you go out into the world. And I’ve always contended Bible College measures the wrong thing. They will measure your academic qualities. They will measure how well you absorb the lessons and then pass the tests that are set for those lessons. And that is what will earn you the Baccalaureate or the accolades of your peers. But nobody measures how many souls anyone ever reaches. And to me, that’s extraordinary because that’s the whole point of Bible quote. We forget what is the purpose of the Christian Church. The purpose of the Christian Church is to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That’s why Jesus left us here on this planet off he left. Otherwise, we’d all go to heaven. The moment you accept Christ as your savior, you’d be raptured and you’d be in heaven. The only reason we left on Earth is to be witnesses, to let our light shine, to tell others about Salvation. And yet you go to Bible College, and that’s where the problem begins, because that’s the one thing they don’t measure. You can be an excellent student. And in fact, the really good students are the worst sold winners because they find their comfort in book knowledge and they probably have not very good interpersonal skills. But it’s okay because they’re going to finish top of their class anyway because of their book knowledge. And the one thing they fail at doesn’t get measured and nobody asks them any questions about it. Bible colleges should rethink the way they do things, but there’s this tremendous pressure for the academics, and soul winning is seen as one of those nebulous things where how do you measure it anyway? Do you measure it by the number of souls? I don’t think so. I think you measure it by how many times this week have you actually witnessed to someone? How many times this year did you witness for someone, how many people have you maybe led to Christ in the last five years? If a Christian, any Christian can’t point to witnessing to at least one other person in past twelve months, something is seriously wrong with that person’s spiritual life. If any Christian can’t point in, let’s take an arbitrary period. Five years can’t point having led someone to Christ in the last five years, just one other person in the last five years. I think something is seriously wrong with that person spiritually. Maybe they haven’t been properly taught. They haven’t been properly motivated. I don’t know what the reason is. And this isn’t to condemn them. It’s just to raise a red flag. Ring the alarm Bell. We shouldn’t be so complacent, so comfortable in the fact that for many of us, we’ve never had the experience of sharing our faith with another human being. And for even fewer of us, we’ve never had the experience of introducing someone else to their savior and leading them to Salvation. It’s extraordinary.

So, Brother, to let me ask you this, and I was going to tack on another question to that, because it’s not just other ministries that are popular, another shoehorn, another prong of that question is there are other so called ways of witnessing that are popular. As was mentioned before, some people will contend that handing out a tract is the same as actually talking to someone about the Lord. Some people will contend that their lifestyle is more than enough. They don’t actually have to open up their mouths and speak the gospel to someone. And recently, with the advent of social media, YouTube, Facebook, all of these different things where you could post inspirational quotes and all these other so called outreach or witnessing things on your social media that that qualifies as evangelism, as well as a follow up to the previous question, why is it that these things are so popular and they’ve taken the place of one on one talking to someone like a human being talking to someone in a conversation, imploring them to follow the Savior. Why is it that these different methods seem to be more popular? Are they acceptable as soul winning, or are they shortcuts or excuses for not soul winning? Well, the question provides the answer. They are popular because they aren’t confrontational. The biggest stumbling block for people with one on one soul winning is it is necessarily confrontational. When I meet a total stranger and at some point in my conversation, I have to break the news to this person that he or she is a sinner bound for hell. If they don’t reconcile with their Savior, that’s not a very comfortable conversation to have. It’s a necessary one. It was just as uncomfortable for Jesus in his day, but he never held back. The Apostle Paul never held back. So all the tools we use, there’s nothing wrong with posting things on Facebook or handing out a track. Can you see what I’m holding up here? No, we can’t. I was going to show you the track that I use that I designed myself, wrote myself. I think this is a very good track, and it’s good to just hand out, to stick on someone’s door, to walk through an airport and drop on the floor so that someone’s going to pick it up and wonder who’s littering. And then we’ll read it and see, oh, wait a minute. Maybe there’s a message for me here. All of those things are good, but they should supplement, not replace, one on one, face to face personal evangelism. Unfortunately, they do tend to replace that. And people will say, if you do that, you don’t need to do anything else are just making a lame excuse. Now, you should be doing all of those things plus actually talking to people.

So let me ask you this, though, because a lot of folks will tell you that, hey, I’m an introvert. So therefore, because I don’t have that outgoing personality, I don’t feel comfortable doing certain things. I have folks that will tell me I don’t feel comfortable knocking on doors of strangers because I don’t like when strangers knock on my door. So where does your personality fit in here? Yeah, I think it does. But the Holy Spirit knows us all very well. And with his help, even the most introverted person can be an extrovert when it comes to soul. And there are different ways you do it. If you consider this for those of us who at some time in our life fell in love and got married, the person you fell in love with when you decided this is the one, I’ll tell you the first thing you did, and this applies to anybody, everybody. The first thing you did was pick up the phone and tell someone I’ve met the girl of my dreams, but the girl says, I’ve met the hunkiest guy ever, and I think I’m going to marry him. It’s the most natural thing to do because you’ve fallen in love with someone and your whole consciousness is full of the reality of that person. And so the most natural thing to do is to talk about that person to anybody, even a complete stranger, because you’re singing a Merry tune on the bus and the person next to you says, well, you’re in a good mood, and you turn to them and say, yes, I am, I’m in love. Well, it’s no different when you talk about Jesus, or it shouldn’t be. And the reason we find it so hard to talk about him is we just aren’t in love enough with him. It doesn’t mean we’re bad Christians, but there’s kind of a disconnect between ourselves and the one who saved us. And if you are intensely in love with your savior, the easiest, most natural thing in the world is to tell anybody else about how wonderful Jesus is. It’s not hard. And you don’t have to know any scriptures. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an introvert, an extrovert or any other kind of hurt. You’re going to talk about him because you love him. And by the way, incredibly, you know he loves you, which is an overwhelming thought.

All right, brother, before we go into this break, let me ask you this, too. Is the lack of soul winning in the Church a sin issue or lack of equipment? Both. It’s a thin issue. You made the point earlier when it’s challenging to be a soul winner because you’re naked in that moment. And if your life isn’t right with God, why are you so many you’re going to be telling someone about what a wonderful savior Jesus is, but apparently he wasn’t that wonderful in your case, because your life is a mess. Probably not a good idea to go soul winning in that case. So it is a life issue, but it’s also a matter of it’s just not promoted enough, appreciated enough, taught enough in the Church.

You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Brother Edward Thal, and we’re talking about soul winning and the Church. When we return, we’ll find out if we can fulfill this individual mandate to soul winning by financially supporting missionaries. We’ll be right back.

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Brother, can the individual Christians responsibility for soul winning be fulfilled by financially supporting missionaries, missionaries that go off to other countries, perhaps other Church plants in the nation? The reason why we ask this question is because we see it quite often where there’s a lot of zeal and excitement for missions conferences and missionary stories and all sorts of missions and everything. But that same fervor we see is not really there for soul winning. So can people just financially support the missionaries that go and do actual soul winning and Church planting and not personally go out themselves? Is that acceptable? No, and I say no emphatically at the same time. Of course, supporting missions is very important because we have to go into all the world and I can’t be in all the world. I can only be where I am right now. And so I’ve supported missions for years, and in fact, I’ve been on the mission field several times to help other missionaries to get churches started, and I think it’s very worthwhile. So, yes, we should support missions and we should be excited about missions, but that never, ever should be a substitute for my personal responsibility to share my own faith with some other person that I can reach in my mission field, which happens to start at my neighbor’s door right next to me. I live in a subdivision and everybody here in the houses around me know I’m a Christian. They know what I think, what I believe. They probably think my wife and I are a bit naughty because three times a week we disappear to Church and every chance we get to these people, if we take them, my wife makes the best banana Walnut bread, and so we might take them a loaf of bread and tell them we love them and Jesus loves them. But I just would feel guilty about knowing I’ve got somebody living next door to me who could end up in hell because I never bothered to go and make friends with them and tell them about Jesus and why my life is so full of joy. And the people across the road, by the way, I’m thinking of this one particular family. It’s a rather large family. It’s a single mother. At first we’re quite hostile towards us because we come from different backgrounds, but we’ve just over the years made friends with them and love them and take them goodies every now and again and take an interest in the kids when they’re playing in the streets outside and we become friends. I don’t know that I’ll ever get saved, but at least they know that we’re Christians and that Christians are actually nice people and generous people and friendly people. So every individual has an individual responsibility to be an individual soul winner. And then you can tack onto that supporting missions and handing out tracts to strangers and not talking to them or putting a track in the pockets of the aircraft you’re flying in. The seatback has got a little pocket always a good idea to drop a track in there. Those are all good and wonderful things to do, but they should never be a substitute for personally approaching someone else to try and share your faith.

Let’s dig it a little bit deeper, though. Why is that so? Why is it that some Christians find it easier to financially support a missionary than not to go out? My contention is, at least for some, is that the finances that they are putting in doesn’t create a sacrifice for them. But if they have to put in the time to go on soul winning, that’s a sacrifice. I know for some people the finances might be a sacrifice, but I’m wondering when we dig a little bit deeper, why is it that some Christians find it easier for machinery? You want $200 per month, I’ll give you that. But to go across the street and not my neighbor’s door? No, I won’t do that. Why is it that we find it more easy? Is it because of some of the stuff we just talked about, of being afraid, of being introverted, or is it really just a sin in these people’s lives that they really can’t see this? No, I wouldn’t label it a sin. We got to be careful. I’ve got to be careful because I tend to be kind of enthusiastic about the subject. So I never want to make my Christian brothers and sisters feel that I’m condemning them. I’d like to encourage them. But to your question, it’s easier to support missionaries because it’s easier to support a missionary than it is to knock on your neighbor’s door. That’s why it’s a lot easier to drop a check in the plate than it is to go knock on a stranger’s door and say, I want to tell you about Jesus.

By the way, that reminds me of another issue. Because I’ve tried every possible way of solo winning. I finally, years ago develop what I think is for me and for many other people who are trained, the easiest way to be a personal evangelist. I use a survey. The point is, if you go out door knocking and you want to engage someone in a conversation, I very quickly got convicted by the fact of knocking on a door and saying, Hello, I’m from such and such Church, and you have a Church you go to. I’d like to invite you to Church, and people very quickly say, no, thanks, and that’s the end of the conversation. Well, first of all, as I’ve already intimated, nowhere in the Bible are we told we need to invite people to Church. The Church doesn’t say that we invite people to Christ. So I think the whole premise of that approach is wrong. But the other thing that struck me is how do I get people to engage in a conversation with me so that we can establish a bridge between each other and I can then present the gospel in a way that’s non threatening to that person. And after much trial and error, I came up with a simple five question survey. So in all the churches where I’ve been, I produce a form which says, Name of Church, community survey. And it’s got the five questions printed on there. It’s got a space where you can put the yes no answers and the values. And then at the bottom space for names and addresses of people, you’re going to follow up. And I put that on a clipboard and I have a pen in one hand and the clipboard in the other hand. And when I go knock on the door and the person opens the door, remember, that person is opening the door to a total stranger. So, like, if someone knocks on my door and I don’t open the door and there’s someone standing there, I have no idea who they are and why they’re there until they tell me I’m from the lawn service. Would you like to buy lawn service from me? Okay, now I know who I’m dealing with. Well, it’s the same with seller winning. So I have my clipboard in one hand, pin in the other hand, a smile on my face. Someone comes to the door and I say, Hi, I’m doing a community survey for my Church. I got five questions. Takes 1 minute, and that’s all I say. Would you like to take the survey? I don’t even tell them the name of my Church. I just say I’m doing a community survey for my Church. I’ve got five questions. It takes 1 minute. I can tell you that. And I’ve been doing this for years and years and years. 90% of the doors I knock on people will take the survey because I’ve got a positive attitude, I’m confident, and I’ve dressed to them. It’s a survey and it takes 1 minute. You know, most people actually want to give their opinions. People want to know what’s in the survey. What can I tell the guy that he’d like to know? And maybe it’s also because the Holy Spirit is there to help. But I promise you, it’s no exaggeration to say 90% of people will take the survey. Whereas if you just go knock on the door, Hi, I’m from such and such a Church. There’s a tractor. I want to invite you to come to Church. The response level is much lower.

Second point, if they take the survey, I’ve now engaged them in conversation. And the third question in the survey is, if you die today, do you know where you go tonight or today, do you know where you’re headed in eternity? Do you believe in eternity? And the answer to that question tells me all I need to know about the person I’m dealing with. And as I tell the people that I train here, if you do nothing else but get to the third question, ask somebody, if you were to die today, where would you spend eternity? And at that point, they slammed the door on you. You have done what God wants you to do. You have planted a seed in their mind that will make them think about the most important question any human being faces. Where will I spend eternity? And it’s the one question 99% of human beings are very successful in avoiding because they don’t want to think about it. It’s too scary, it’s too confrontational, it’s too whatever it is, they just don’t want to think about it. They want to get on with their lives. And now the day has been ruined because some food cake came and asked them the question that we should never ask where you’re going to spend eternity. And if that person worries enough about it, they might actually do something about it and get saved. So if the conversation ends there, I feel it was worthwhile going out and knocking on that door. Whereas if I just get a lot of doors slammed in my face and I don’t get a chance to talk to anybody, I’ve achieved nothing. And by the way, if they still want to continue the conversation about, no, I don’t know where I’m going. And they look like they are willing to continue the next question. Of course, will anyone ever shown you from the Bible how you can know for sure? And you then take them to next step where you say, well, do you mind if I show you how easy this is? And I’ve got my tracks here and now, by the way, I really seldom ask permission. I just assume that they want to hear. So I’ll open the track and I start going through it and saying, I want to leave this with you. And I encourage you to do take you two minutes to read and it could change your life. It’s so simple. It’s got step one, step two, step three, step four. And I actually take them through the track on the premise that I’m just explaining how the track works. But I’ll explain how the track works. It takes me a minute to take them through that track and hit the high point and then put it in their hand. And before I close the conversation, if I get that far now, not all conversations go that far, but a high percentage do.

And I’ll say my last question to them then is based on what we’ve been talking about, is there any reason you can think of why you would not want to ask Jesus Christ to save you right now, today? And I just wait for an answer. It’s a question you cannot answer with a yes or no. You have to give a reason. Is there any reason you can think of why you would not want to pray for Jesus Christ to save you right now? They have to come up with a reason. No, I want to go to hell, actually. So no thanks. I don’t want to talk about Jesus or I’m too busy. I’ve got other commitments they’re going to give you a reason. And if we get to that point, my next question doesn’t let them off the hook because I’ll say to them, well, let me see if I understand you correctly. Are you telling me that you’re making a deliberate choice right now to reject Jesus Christ as your savior? Is that what you’re saying to me? And that’s like a slap in the face and you say it very politely and earnestly, it’s not condemning the person I want you to understand, is this what you just told me? And you can see the conviction in people’s eyes at that point. So I think the point I’m trying to make is it’s easy to engage people in conversation if you do it the right way. And then every question you ask is so precious, and every moment you’re with them is precious. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re confronting them with real choices that they have to make about the issue of where they spending eternity. Yeah, for sure. So I think the way I do it is very effective. But despite that, one in a thousand will pray for Salvation, because if someone is an adult, they’ve lived a lifetime thinking of good reasons why they’re not going to receive Christ as their savior, and they’re not going to change their minds after a five minute discussion on their doorstep. If they do, I’m always very suspicious. I never put them in a prayer. I asked them to think about. Do you really understand what I was saying? Do you want to go over it again? And if they do still want to pray, I ask them to pray. I never say, well, pray this prayer with me. Now. I want their prayer to be original to themselves because I’m a little wary. This person has lived a lifetime going one way, and now they’re going to change 180 degrees based on a five minute conversation. I’m not buying it. I don’t immediately run back to Chip and say, yeah, I got someone saved today. No, you probably didn’t. So I’ll make an appointment to come back a week later. And very often I come back a week later and they changed their minds or they don’t want to talk about it or they won’t answer the door. And that’s just the world we live in. We’re in a spiritual war, and the Devil’s doing all he can to keep people from Salvation. So I mentioned that to say I’m not an expert soul winner who leads thousands of people to Christ every year. It’s a battle. It’s not easy, but it, in fact, is very, very joyful. It’s worthwhile. I thoroughly enjoy it. And by the way, the best thing is when somebody who’s never been sold winning before wants to come with me. In my experience, something good always happens, as if the Holy Spirit wants to convince this new person, hey, do you see how much fun this can be. Do you see how momentous it can be? So I love taking people with me who’ve never done it before and waiting for God to do something to convince them, yes, this is a good thing to be doing, and you can have a tremendous amount of fun. Well, I get very enthusiastic about it, and people think I’m a nut. Yeah.

Let me ask you this, too. How can outreach Ministry leaders and again, we put in that in quote, effectively combat the excuses Christians give for not actively sold winning. You can’t unless you’re going to get into a heavy debate with them and they’re still not going to believe you. It’s an internal thing. You’ve got to be in love with Jesus. You’ve got to have a sense of responsibility about or to the one who saved you. You’ve got to feel an inner conviction. And all of these things take time and there’s a war going on in the background. And I think the only way you can do it is you have to model it every day so that in all the churches I’ve been in, the Church we were in together, people know that I’m a soul winner, that I enjoy soul winning. Why? Because I tell them and I tell them what fun it is. I try and monitor it for them that, yes, you can do the same thing and you’ll have a good time. By the way, the story I told you about the lady who got saved, her son was in the Church I was in, and he was a very busy man. And he used to make time every single Thursday night to come straight from his office to meet me at the Church. And he and I would go out together. And this was an extremely wealthy man, and we would go knocking on doors together. We had the best time together every Thursday night because that man was committed through his mother’s influence and his father’s influence to being a soul winner. And she and I just hit it off and we do it together. So beyond that, just modeling it, I’m not sure how else to do it. You don’t do it by preaching it every week because people get sick of hearing about it. You don’t do it by condemning people because they won’t want to listen to you anymore. You can’t force them to do it, and they just got to fall in love with Jesus more. You have to hold up the fact that, hey, this is something we should be doing. This is something everybody should be doing. This is something there’s no excuse for not doing. But if you say that every week people are going to go somewhere else where they’re not going to get badgered every time they walk through the doors of the Church there’s, that nut is going to tell me I’m a backslide that doesn’t achieve much.

I wonder how much of it is not hearing about it from the pulpit or perhaps not having peripheral encouragement. We heard a sermon last night and one of the encouragement or exhortations in the sermon was that you need to be careful about who your friends are because they iron. Sharpens iron. If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas type of idea. Okay. So if the leaders are kind of limited in what they can do to kind of encourage people to go soul in and beyond what you’ve just described, the question now is, how can we serve one another up? Is it the same thing? We just model it and we exhort one another iron. Sharpening iron. Yeah, like you described, showing them how it can be done. Like, I know, for example, for us. And I realized I have a bunch of run on sentences here. I’m kind of rambling because I get excited about this, too. I’ve spoken to many women about the need to witness, and oftentimes I’ve heard them give excuses that relate to their family members. More often it’s their children. For example. Oh, yeah, I’d go soul winning, but I don’t have a babysitter or I’d go soul winning, but the kids this or the kids that. And I don’t try to boast or anything like that, but I just gently encourage them and tell them, I bring my kids to the door with me. You can train kids to be silent at the door. And oftentimes when children go with you, it’s my experience that they seem to soften the heart of the person that’s at the door, because absolutely right. It happens every time. They’re more willing to talk, they’re more willing to ask about the kids and open up doors for conversation. And so kids at the door are not a bad thing at all. And Besides, your kids at the door will give them the perfect opportunity to see you, mom, to see you, dad, obeying Christ and setting the good example for you to go do the same. So how can we start one another up? I guess is my roundabout way of asking, how can we start one another up to go slow winning by doing exactly what you do. If you’re enthusiastic about it and it’s something that’s part of your life, other people are going to wonder and they’re going to want to do it too. And a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people won’t respond. I’ve said that several times. It’s a war. The devil doesn’t want us to do it and he’s going to fight people. I don’t have the answer to that. There’s no magic potion that you can offer. Hey, if you drink this, you’ll wake up tomorrow morning, you’ll be a soul winner. It doesn’t work that way. So many things in life don’t you know how you have commercials for Take this pill and you’ll burn fat and lose, like £60 in a week or something, when in reality there’s just no substitute for good nutrition and exercise. While soul winning is very much the same way, you got to be right with the Lord, love your Savior, and soul winning flows out of that. Let me switch gears a little here, Brother Thal, and ask you about the role technology has with how we interact and communicate with one another, how information gets disseminated, and how people interact with that information. Technology has radically changed how we interact and communicate with one another, particularly in the last decade, maybe in the last two decades or so.

Does that mean that the current methods of soul winning are both outdated and irrelevant? No, I don’t think this is any form of soul winning will never be outdated or irrelevant. Soul winning can be enhanced by the use of technology, and it’s a useful tool. Just one more error to put in your quiver or not. I’m sure there are people who, although I’m not aware of any, but you raise an interesting point. Can you develop a really good online presence as a personal evangelist? I suppose you could. I think of Jordan Peterson, the incredible impact that man has made. And by the way, it’s fascinating to watch his journey towards Christ. He’s an honest man, but he’s had a worldwide impact because of his very common sense views on how to approach life. Did he get saved? Well, if he’s not saved, he’s real close to being saved. I’d agree with that for sure. One of the most significant things I heard him say recently was he was coming to the realization that the Bible is true, and his realization of just who Jesus Christ is was terrifying to him. And I knew exactly what he meant. He wasn’t saying it in a negative sense. But when you understand who Christ is, who God is, the immense, omnipotent, omnipresent, superlative God who spoke the universe into existence, is personally interested in you. Well, and wants to enter into a dialogue with you. If you really understand the implications of that, it is terrifying. It’s like meeting the King of the world, the President of the United States, getting a gold plate in the invitation to dinner at the White House, you’d be a little nervous. Well, this is dealing with someone far greater than the President of the United States, all going to the White House. And so Jordan Peterson is right there, close to Salvation if he isn’t already saved. But the point I wanted to make about him is he found an online presence that he’s very effective in conveying. And I suppose there are Christians who could do the same thing. Yeah, I joined in and say that as well. These people that we’re talking about here, the Jordan Peterson of the world. Not that you could say Jordan Peterson. He’s quite unique who he is. But what I mean is people who have a very strong online presence, that they’re on the fighting lines on the front lines of the ongoing culture war right now for the voice of just basic sanity because of the insanity of those that have gone far left, Christians might look at that and think, oh, well, there’s really no need for personal evangelism because number one, you’ve got these big names out on the front lines fighting the culture war, really engaging people with biblical ideas. And so there’s really no need like one on one, soul winning is dead. Essentially, the way to reach people is make a YouTube video or jump on Twitch or TikTok or something along those lines. And I said this to MCG many, many times that Christians ought to be very, very, very, very careful about consuming that kind of media and letting it absolve them of their personal requirements to evangelize. Sure. It’s very important that Christians be careful about who they listen to on the front lines of the culture war, because just because they’re conservative doesn’t mean that the exalt price. Some of them have real potty mouths. Exactly. And so Christians might be fooled into thinking that because these men and women are the ones that are kind of delivering some hard hitting blows in the cultural war against the leftists and everyone who’s crazy out there with their far left thinking, well, just because these people are delivering some insane blows and it seems like these people are winning, like Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire, all these people make them Alice Tim Pool, then the ways that we used to do soul winning, the door to door, one on one discipleship, these kinds of things are no longer valid. They are outdated. It’s just not the hip thing to do anymore. It’s not this or that. It’s this plus that. Plus that. Got it. Yeah. I mean, use every Avenue you can, including the old fashioned way of knocking on the door, talking to a perfect stranger. Because as to get back to my opening remark, the one who benefits the most is you. If you will just do it, go out and fulfill the great Commission you please God, he will bless you. He will encourage you. You will learn a lot about yourself, about your own faith, about your interaction with fellow human beings. And there’s an incredible bonus, unbelievable bonus. Every now and again, someone actually will get saved. And it just makes life immeasurably sweeter not to like about it.

Tell me this, brother, because I think you’re old enough to maybe have seen the cultural change in America. I think I’m old enough to have seen that cultural change already. Do you think that an apologetic based method of soul winning would be more effective than that? Jesus loves you. God has a wonderful plan for your life, kind of a method that we need to move away from the old fashioned method of, hey, Jesus loves you, get saved. Two or more of apologetic method of soul winning. I’m not sure that apologetics per se is the answer. But I certainly believe that Jesus loves you want to do your favor by saving you, and you can do him a favor by getting saved. That approach, I think, is deadly. It’s wrong. It gives people the totally wrong impression. This is what’s wrong with these megachurches where you come as you are, leaders, you are and have a good time in between. It’s deadly because I get to make the statement as simple as possible. God loves you and wants to be your friend, but he will never be your power. He’s not your buddy. He’s God. He’s the creator, the Holy, all powerful, majestic, frightening God. We can’t even imagine him. And I think of Job challenging God to appear to him so that Joe can put his case to him because Joe feels offended and it’s not fair. What he’s going through and what Job suffered was horrible. But God’s response to Job was, who do you think you are? Do you know who you’re talking to? Job obviously not. My favorite part of this from Job 38 to 41, is this God really thanking Job for his arrogance and stupidity? And at one point, the whole of chapter 41 is about the crocodile, the bias, and the King James calls it. And God says to Job, in so many words, Job, you are scared of a crocodile and you’re not scared of me. And I made the crocodile. And Job’s response ultimately is to say, I’ve heard of you, but now I see you and I hate myself and I repent in dust and Ashes. Please forgive me. And God, of course, does forgive him. But God never answers his question. God never explains to Job why he went through that, why he had to suffer so much. He never answered Joe’s question. He just says, okay, I’ll bless you. And Job, of course, has a wonderful end to his life. And if you look back, he’d say every minute that something was worthwhile. We just need to have the proper perspective of God. We’re not doing God a favor by getting saved. Don’t expect a brass band to come marching up your door with waving flags with banners with your name on it because you did God a favor. Now, actually, we desperately need Salvation. Without it, we are doomed and we should be running to God and clean team. Please save me rather than oh, God, I think I got time on my busy schedule. I’ll give you a five minute prayer and now send me all the goodies you possibly can in my life.

I’ve been a Christian now for over 50 years. It took me a long time to learn what to me has been the essential truth about Christianity. Christianity is not a lifetime negotiation with God about how much you can squeeze out of him for your benefit. What Christianity is a lifetime struggle with yourself, about how much you are willing to yield to God. For his benefit. That’s Christianity. And the emphasis, I’m afraid, in a country like America is on the first part. We’re going to teach you how much you can get out of God for your benefit. He’s got a bag full of goodies, and boy, you just press the right button and God’s got lots of goodies to give you. That is so wrong that’s almost Virgin and Satanic. It gives people a totally wrong impression of God. We should be grateful every single moment of every day that God in his mercy saved us. And our gratitude should impel us to live the kind of life that are honoring to him not to have this casual kind of, hey, God, my buddy, I have a problem here. Come on, Lord, and help me out. Let’s get a good rock song going here and all get happy about it. That’s so childish and stupid. It degrades God and brings him down to the level of Joe next door who just happens to be a bit smarter and richer than you are. That’s a totally evident view of God.

Yes. You couldn’t agree more. I’ve heard people say, oh, if you don’t give your ties and offerings to the Church, then your car is going to break down. You have to give that money to the mechanic or you’re going to end up in hospital. I’m like, God is not a tit for tattoo that go around say, oh, well, you don’t need to do this. So I’m going to tell your car to break down. Your view of God is very small. I’m not saying you shouldn’t tie. I’m not simply saying I don’t think God look at it and say, okay, well, MCG, you didn’t put exactly 10% or 10% plus for your offering in the plate. So your car, you’re going to have a problem with your car. You’re going to have to spend the same money on your car. I don’t think you do that. That’s a childish way of teaching tithing. When you have a Church where the congregation view of God is of a very small God, a convenient God. It’s because the people who are teaching them have a view of God as a small, convenient card. So the congregation reflects the pastor, and we don’t have enough really Godly men in the pulpit these days anymore. People who fear God, reverence God, respect God, but at the same time are so in love with God that their lives are full of joy in serving God. To fear God and reverence God doesn’t mean you’ve got to walk around all day like your shoes are too size or too small. I mean, being a Christian is the most joyful, exciting, wonderful life imaginable. It’s a fantastic life. Who wouldn’t want to be a Christian? And that’s the view people need to have of God and of Salvation. And it’s because we have such a low appreciation of God and of our Salvation that we don’t particularly want to share that with other people. It’s okay. But I’d much rather tell my neighbor about my new car. Man, did you see the car? What a deal I made that you did. Sitting in my driveway, I got $10,000 off the sticker price And I’m going to tell all my neighbors about it. And by the way, drive through the neighborhood So they can all admire my car. If we could only get that enthusiastic about Jesus. Soul winning would be a lot easier for all of us.

So, brother Thal, share the gospel with us and tell us, what do the scriptures mean when it says he that one of souls is wise? Oh, my goodness, you have an hour. Take as long as you need. Listen, if you have a right relationship with God Doesn’t mean you’re perfect. You’re talking to a very imperfect man. And I’ve had a very Rocky life. I’ve made every mistake it’s possible to make. If you’re looking for someone to hold up as an example of a good Christian, I’m not that person. But in this long life walking with God, I’ve come to learn how absolutely incredible he is. And so if your view of God is the correct view of God, That God is greater and more wonderful and more transcendently marvelously lovely than anything you could possibly imagine. And just by his love for me has made my life more beautiful. If you can appreciate that appreciating Salvation and talking about Salvation and modeling Salvation really isn’t that hard. But you’ve got to start with knowing who God is. And I guess before you can know who God is, you have to know who you are. I’m not sure it’s a chicken and hen situation to start by knowing God or knowing me, but there’s got to be a real understanding of those two people in this contract me and God relative to each other. And then the idea of Salvation and sharing Salvation becomes a Holy thing. It’s not something you do. It’s something you are. It’s your life and it’s a wonderful life. Amen.

Brother Edward Thal, thank you for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. To get a hold of us to support this podcast or to learn more about removing barriers, go to removingbarriers. Net. This has been the removing barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers So that we all can have Clayview of the cross.