oh you know what I'm sorry I totally forgot we have something else important
to do before we get into the sermon so let's do this before the scripture
reading brother Alex Larson is going to come at this time and he's for some
reason taking the offering right now so we got to get somebody else to take that
plate out of his hand brother Alex Larson is going to come at this time and
he's going to talk about something that he's been doing over the last few months
and I know that other guys in the church have also gotten on this and so he's
going to explain to you some of the ways that he has used technology and
video chat stuff in order to reach people with the gospel a lot of
Americans but also even people in other countries and so at this time Alex will
come and explain that
all right so I want to talk about something it's called Omi TV it's it's a
website it's also an app it's basically as you said it's like a video chat thing
where you can talk with it's basically just randomized people who use the app
they're on there for various different reasons sometimes people they're just
bored so they just want to find somebody to talk to or something like that but we
found that it's a really effective way to go soul winning so basically just to
give you some stats about Omi TV it's like I said it's an app you can download
on your phone it's also a website it's ome.tv is how you spell it so if you're
looking to do it but on the App Store it says that there's over a hundred million
downloads so a lot of people have this and then just from a quick Google search
there's at least 10 million accounts that people have made and then at any
given time you're on there it gives you a number of how many people are active
it's a hundred fifty thousand to three hundred thousand people that are on
there at any time and like Pastor Anderson said it's not just people
locally but it's people from all over the world and so it's a really good way
to reach people just from here in Arizona without even going there right
and so I just want to talk about a few things about how to use it and just
encourage you to use it so basically if you have an iPhone you can sign in you
can make an account or I think you could sign in as a guest on an iPhone but then
if you have it on Android you can as a as an app you can connect it with your
Facebook account and then I think it's the same thing online as well but
basically what you do is you just go on and you just either on your phone you
just start swiping and it just connects you with a random person just somebody
else is on the app and you can just go and say hey are you a Christian do you
go to church anywhere just however you start your intro and you can use this as
a way to give people the gospel and it's very fast paced it's it's very fast
paced because a lot of times people are skipping you a lot of people don't want
to talk to you a lot of people don't want to hear the gospel they don't like
it when you bring up the Bible and things like that but that's good because
you're not wasting your time with people who don't want to hear right you're
going to people who actually want to hear the gospel and so in because of
that it's very fruitful right because of the fast-paced nature of it and then
another thing is that a lot of younger people use it a lot of you know
teenagers college age you know and that demographic tends to be more receptive
so that's one reason that you can also get a lot of people saved on there so a
lot of people and our church have been using it over the last year and a half
or so I started about last year in July using this app and I know that there's
actually one guy who was here at this conference I don't know if anybody knows
Christian Grossman he already left but he's from first works but he actually
said that he got reached through this app not only TV in particular but one
before that was called Omegle that got shut down but he said a few years ago
there was a guy from from Canada named John who preached the gospel to him over
there and he didn't get saved at the time but it allowed him to or it kind of
planted a good seed that helped him to look into the Bible way to heaven more
and he found the video on YouTube and he got saved so and he's a zealous
soul winner he goes to first works Baptist Church he was here at this
conference and so he wouldn't even be here right now if you know this guy John
from Canada didn't preach in the gospel through that app and there's even been
people from other there's the guy that came to our church just about a week ago
who actually lived in Arizona who I got saved on there and I ran into him and he
he recognized because I had talked to him before but he didn't get saved the
first time the second time he got saved and he told me he lived in Arizona so I
invited him to church and he actually came just last Sunday so praise God for
that so basically the way that you use it like I said you just if you're on
your phone you just swipe to the next person you know if somebody doesn't want
to listen on the computer there's just like a green and a red button you just
hit the button it starts it just goes to the next person and you can literally go
as long as you want right because and any time of day too because people are
always active so that's the advantage of doing it that you can do it anywhere at
any amount of time that you want so you don't even have to like cut out a large
part of your schedule you can just go for 20 minutes right you can get
somebody say there have been many times where it's like the first person you
talk to you want to hear the God wants to hear the gospel and so for that
reason you can you know you can kind of fit it into your schedule if you want to
do extra soul winning right let's say throughout the week you don't have much
time to go door-to-door let's say you just go on Sunday or on Saturday or
something like that but you want to get some extra soul winning in you know this
is a good way to do that right to do it throughout the week like maybe on a I
don't know a Tuesday afternoon or something you know you get off work you
don't want to drive all the way over here let's say you get off late or
something like that you can just pop on there 20 minutes 30 minutes you can get
somebody save maybe a little bit longer depends on how much time you have but
you can use your free time to reach people with the gospel now one
disclaimer I want to make about this is that there's a lot of people on there
that are very rude there's a lot of people that say a lot of you know very
offensive and perverted things and so I don't recommend it for younger people I
don't recommend it for kids teenagers probably not any ladies either and then
all obviously you know you have to keep a straight face you have to keep you
know be able to bear a lot of insult a lot of reviling and stuff like that
because people think they could just say whatever they want because they're behind
a computer screen right and so you just have to brace yourself for that but then
besides those people everybody else you talk to you know or not everybody but
you know what I mean like a lot of people you talk to will want to hear the
gospel so just tying it in with the missions conference that like I said
there's a lot of people you can reach from all over the world right you can
reach people from the United States all over the United States I would say most
people that I talked to who actually want to hear the gospel from the south
or from like the New York area but then there's been people who have been saved
from all kinds of different countries in the world and so I talked to another
brother here who goes soul-winning on there quite a bit there's a man here who
is goes to our church who is retired and he spends like four or five hours a day
pretty much going and using this app for soul-winning and he gets a lot of people
saved and he gave me a list of some countries of people he's gotten saved
from so I just want to read that list so obviously US Canada Suriname Costa Rica
Dominica Australia Ireland the United Kingdom Netherlands Luxembourg France
and the guy that I personally got saved from France he was actually from
Cameroon but he was living in France Denmark Poland Norway Croatia Italy
Slovakia Bulgaria Romania Moldova Sweden Finland Lithuania Russia South Africa
Botswana Philippines South Korea New Zealand Dominican Republic Montenegro
Malta Greece Lebanon Switzerland Nigeria and probably some other places that I'm
missing as well so you can talk to people from all over the world right and
I've also preached to people from other countries that didn't get saved from
places like Gambia and Spain and Chile and Japan and Germany and Israel and
Indonesia and Micronesia and Azerbaijan and Argentina and Bolivia so you can
talk to people like I said from literally all over the world right all
kinds of different backgrounds and for that reason obviously in some of these
other foreign countries people are more receptive but then like I said even in
the US because they're often young people they're receptive anyway and so
it's a it's a very good way like I said if you just have extra time to fit in
your schedule to reach more people with the gospel and so I strongly encourage
you to use it like I said as a disclaimer you know if you're young you
know if you're a teenager or whatever I recommend not using it but if you're
like a mature adult you can handle you know people saying weird stuff or
whatever then obviously you can skip them and you can block them and stuff
like that you can report them even and they can get banned but I recommend
using it as an extra way to preach the gospel so yeah thank you yeah this is a
really cool thing that's been going on for a long time a lot of people being
saved I mean it's incredible you know just the numbers that have been saved
and just all over the world I mean it's great and obviously you can see a lot of
problems with it as far as just you know going online talking to strangers the
weirdos and it's easy to criticize something like this or pick it apart but
at the end of the day you know physically going out sold it you're
gonna run into weirdos too and you can see some wild things out there and deal
with things you know it's just kind of called going out into the world and
preaching the gospel and you know as we're here in the 21st century obviously
technology is changing and the world is changing and we got to jump on these
type of opportunities just to do whatever we can to win as many people to
Christ as we can and there's absolutely nothing sinful about it and so why not
just go for it and use every possible means but again you know as brother
Larson was saying this isn't for everybody we're not we're not saying hey
everybody go out and do this but you know what for some people this is really
working for them and they're using it effectively they're having success it's
a fruitful thing for them I'm not saying for you to do it necessarily but maybe
this is something that you could think about doing because you know we
definitely don't want kids and teenagers on there and stuff like that and and
probably not even ladies unless you just have hair on your teeth ladies but but
the bottom line is that you know whatever we can do to preach the gospel
to as many people being creative and using technology we don't want to be
these luddites who are just like against technology for no reason and we don't
really even know why obviously this is never going to totally replace soul
winning in person just like listening to preaching online is never going to
replace physically showing up to church but it's a wonderful supplement you know
all kinds of soul winning right knocking doors going to the parks the city
centers the college campuses online you know it's just another hook in the water
I think it's wonderful and I'm super happy to hear about the results it's
exciting to hear about people getting saved all over the world through this
app and then you know for those who are skeptical it's like bro literally had a
visitor in church from this app I mean that's incredible right I mean that just
goes to show you that you're talking to people all over the world and boom one
of them lives right here actually shows up so for the skeptics who feel like it
isn't real or that there's nothing happening well I mean you can't really
get better evidence than that when you got people even showing up physically
from this thing and you're running into people even that got saved years ago I
just heard that story now for the first time that you know a dedicated member of
a church got reached through this thing a few years ago so that's super cool
really appreciate Alex sharing that with us and so at this time let's go
ahead and read the scripture