Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Welcome everybody. Welcome back Fifth Ward Baptist Church. Please take your seats.
Welcome back.
If you would please grab a hymnal.
Turn to song number 389.
Bring them in.
Song number 389.
Bring them in.
389.
Bring them in.
Hark! Did the shepherd's voice I hear, Out in the desert, dark and clear,
Calling the teens who've gone astray, far from the shepherds pulled away.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring them in from the fields of sin.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring the wondering ones who need us.
Who go and help the shepherds kind, help in the wondering ones to find.
Who'll bring the lost ones to the fold, where they'll be sheltered from the cold.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring them in from the fields of sin.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring the wondering ones who need us.
Out in the desert, hear their cry, out in the mountains, wild and high.
Hark, as the master seems to gain, go find my sheep, wherever they need.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring them in from the fields of sin.
Bring them in, bring them in, bring the wondering ones who need us.
Let's pray. Dear God, thank you for letting us gather together in your house.
Dear God, thank you for the missions conference. Thank you for everything you've done for us.
The great soul winning we've seen.
Dear God, please be with Pastor Anderson as he preaches to us about Armenia tonight.
And please be with the fellowship as well. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
All right, let's turn in our hymn books to song number 377.
Song number 377, Rescue the Perishing.
Song number 377.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
And let me take you from sin and the grave.
We will be everyone's, lift up the fallen.
Help them, oh Jesus, the mighty to save.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
Though they are fighting him, still he is waiting.
Waiting again in the trial to receive.
We will never explain, be with them gently.
Be the forgiveness they all believe in.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
Down in the human heart, crushed by the tender.
Feel in thy mirror that grace can restore.
Crushed by a loving heart, wave in thy kindness.
Lords that are prone, they will vibrate once more.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
Rescue the perishing, give me the ransom.
Pray for thy labor, the Lord will provide.
Back to the narrow way, patience we may amend.
Help out for one where a Savior has died.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
All right, this time we'll quickly go through a few announcements.
If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high.
We'll get to you with one.
Welcome to the final service of the missions conference.
Thank you for all those who have hung with us for nine services and five days.
I know it was a lot, but it's been a lot of great stuff.
Just so much great information and preaching and inspiration.
For those of you who do have the stamped passport,
first of all, I want to start with the people that are from out of town.
If you're from out of town and you've got your passport stamped up to this point,
either everything except tonight or up to and including tonight,
what I would like you to do is right now I want you to get up out of your seat
and head back to Brother Noble and he's got your prize for you.
He can give you your final stamp and your prize.
So if you're from out of town and you need to get your prize,
head to the back and get it right now.
As the piano begins to play, would you come?
No, I'm just kidding, but just get out of your seat.
If you have your passport, take it back there.
Get your final stamp, get your prize, and take care of it.
Okay, I want to say this, is that if you don't have a stamp,
you're like, I was there, but I don't have the stamp or whatever.
It's like, nope, this is a game.
The game has rules, all right?
You have to have the stamps, okay?
That's part of the fun.
You've got to have the passport or the Bible filled with all the stamps.
Go back there, you don't have it.
Ah, card declined.
Okay, that's it.
End of story.
All right.
So I forgot to mention this this morning,
but after the service, a photo, is that right, for the out-of-towners?
So yeah, it'd be great if we could get all of our out-of-towners together
and just get like a photo of just the out-of-towners.
Mrs. Madison wanted to take a picture like that.
And then maybe a photo of the speakers from the week,
get all the speakers together and take a photo and do that.
All right, and then we are, of course, if you look there,
we have our service times, soul-winning times, all that.
Across the page, we're wrapping up with the 2024 yearbook portraits.
So if you have not gotten your yearbook portrait,
it's now or never, all right?
So make sure that you get that squared away with Brother Ramon Ventura
or get signed up, because we are down to the wire.
We're already into overtime on this thing,
and so you want to make sure that you get that done.
This coming Saturday, two things are going on this Saturday.
One of them is going on in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, right?
There's going to be a soul-winning marathon over there.
So for all you East Coast people out there listening,
and if you know anybody out on the East Coast
that could come to something like this,
Camden, New Jersey, soul-winning marathon this coming Saturday.
Brother Daniel Ryder is going to be organizing this.
So if you're here tonight,
Brother Daniel Ryder is sitting here in the front row.
You can get any details from him.
Otherwise, email the church, and we can answer your questions.
That is this coming Saturday.
Also this Saturday, for those that are here local in Phoenix,
we are going to have the appreciation dinner
for all those who had perfect attendance
during the mega conference over the summer.
So if you had perfect attendance during the mega conference,
we have you on a list.
If you're like, I don't know, did I?
Well, that means you didn't, okay?
Because we have it on a list.
It's documented.
And so whosoever's name was not found written in the book,
you know, is not going to the dinner.
It's just that simple.
So anyway, we've got a list.
We've got that documented.
You know who you are.
Who is that, by the way?
Put up your hand if that's you.
Okay, that's who we're talking about.
So the dinner is this coming Saturday at 6 p.m.
Then on the back, of course,
we have just a thank you to everyone who helped out
with the decorate, especially the decorating.
I know it's a ton of work and everything.
So let's call out the decorators by name
and give them a hand.
Okay, so I know that we had Catherine Dickon.
You were a decorator?
All right, and that was for Germany?
Am I right?
And then Mrs. Madison with Mrs. Ball for the Caribbean.
You don't even know what you decorated.
South Pacific.
See, I was testing you.
I was just checking, okay?
And then who decorated for Latin America?
Dany Akinosho for Latin America.
And then, of course, we had Desiree Noble for Armenia.
And so let's give them a big hand for their work on that.
APPLAUSE
Excellent work.
As always, every single day of the conference,
they had really cool decorations,
and it's super fun to show up here each day
and see the decorations.
The people at home don't really get to see
all the cool stuff all around,
and I hope that you take the time after the service,
if you haven't already,
just to look at everything,
because there's so much cool Armenia stuff all around here,
especially that ancient manuscript,
Codex Etchmiadzin, the facsimile there.
It's 1,100 years old, really interesting.
It's got some neat pictures right toward the beginning
and right toward the end.
You can see what the text is like.
It's a fascinating artefact to check out.
Also, just all the little trivia and notes all around.
Really a lot of neat things.
Now, this food table also, after the service,
you can smash that food table
and eat all that dried fruit and things.
And when I was in Armenia, I ate dried fruit
literally every single day when I was there,
and so that's a big thing over there.
I really liked it.
And so you can check that stuff out and enjoy.
As far as taking down the decorations tonight,
make sure that you talk to Desiree Noble afterward,
because some of this stuff is her personal stuff.
We want to make sure that it all goes to the right places
and so forth.
So get instructions from her.
We had 44 salvations over the last four days of conference,
and then I'm sure we probably have some more salvations
to report at this time.
So let's go ahead and tally that up quickly if we could.
First of all, before I do that, though, let me just ask,
is there anybody who had any salvations
from Thursday, Friday, or Saturday,
and they didn't already report them?
Because we did report those at the conference,
but if you weren't at the conference, okay, great.
So I'm just getting these ones that are not yet reported, okay?
Anything else from Thursday, Friday, Saturday
that hasn't been reported?
Okay, very good.
All right, now let's talk about today.
So, Brother Scott?
All right.
Got it, got it.
Got it.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Got it, got it.
I can't see how many that is, sorry.
Okay.
Okay, anything else from today?
Gotcha.
Gotcha, okay, perfect.
Thank you for reporting that for us.
Anything else from today?
Okay.
All right, let me just do some math here real quick.
So we got...
All right, so that's a total, then,
for the entire conference of 74 salvations
for the entire conference
of just soul winning right here locally at home.
Somebody said this was a garbage conference,
but I'm like, I don't know what kind of conferences
you've been going to, but I'd like to be invited.
Because if this is a garbage conference,
I'd like to go to the real conference, amen?
74 salvations?
Not to mention that we got to talk about, like, what?
3,000?
About, you know, from all these different events?
4,000? Whatever that was.
Hey, now what we want to do is
if anybody is local,
and you got your passport totally filled up,
because we took care of the out-of-towners,
we wanted to make sure we did that.
If you're local, and you have your passport totally filled out,
you got all the stamps, minus tonight,
or all the stamps including tonight,
head back there and get your prize right now,
out of your seats,
because, you know, we want to go home after church tonight,
you know, some of us,
and so we got to get this taken care of,
and so we got stuff to do,
so go back there right now,
and we will take care of as many people as we can.
If we run out of prizes, well, you're local,
so we'll take care of you in a couple days or something like that,
but we'll take care of as many people as we can.
Don't go up there and start telling him that you're missing a stamp,
because if you're missing a stamp,
he's going to say, depart from me, okay?
It's that simple.
All right, and then the bottom of the page there,
that last announcement,
the date is incorrect on this,
because it's actually going to be December 4th,
that was my bad,
but it's going to be December 4th, Wednesday night,
that Pastor Bruce Mejia from First Works Baptist Church
in Los Angeles, California,
is going to be preaching for us December the 4th,
on a Wednesday night,
so if you don't normally come on Wednesday night,
maybe mark the calendar,
put a little reminder in your planner or whatever,
that you want to be at church on December 4th,
to hear Pastor Mejia preach.
All right, I believe that's it for announcements.
Let's go ahead and sing our next song.
Come lead us.
All right, if you wouldn't take your handles,
there's an insert in the front cover.
Hear my Lord.
Insert in your front cover.
Hear my Lord.
Lord, I give my life to you,
In that rolling gale,
I will follow your great way,
In the faraway,
Give my voice to thee,
Hear my voice to thee,
I will serve you faithfully,
Hear my voice to thee,
Lord, I want to work with you,
Be my faithful guide,
I will never be afraid,
You who are close beside,
Hear my voice to thee,
I will serve you faithfully,
Hear my voice to thee,
Let me see my vision clear,
All around these days,
Will my heart make a sign,
Oh, dear Lord, I pray,
Here am I, Lord, send me,
I will serve you faithfully,
Here am I, Lord, send me.
Song number 401.
Set my soul on fire.
Song number 401.
Set my soul on fire,
Lord, I want to be heard,
Burning deep within me,
Let your voice be heard,
Fill your broken darkness,
In this day and hour,
I will be your witness,
Fill me with the power,
Set my soul on fire,
Lord, set my soul on fire,
Make my life the witness
Of God's saving power,
Fill your broken darkness,
Waiting for thy word,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
Set my soul on fire,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
For the lost and saved,
Give to me a passion,
As I seek to live,
Help me not to wander,
Never let me fail,
Fill me with thy spirit,
Let thy will prevail,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
Set my soul on fire,
Make my life the witness
Of God's saving power,
Millions roll to darkness,
Waiting for thy word,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
Set my soul on fire,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
Give my name divine,
For to know not to wander,
In this day of strife,
Nothing else will matter,
But to live for me,
I will be your witness,
As you live in me,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
Set my soul on fire,
Make my life the witness,
Of God's saving power,
Millions roll to darkness,
Waiting for thy word,
Set my soul on fire, Lord,
All right, this time we'll just quickly pass our offering plate around as the plate goes around.
Let's turn our Bibles tonight to Revelation chapter number 15.
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 a website. It's also an app.
It's basically, as he said, it's like a video chat thing where you can talk with,
it's basically just randomize people who use the app.
They're on there for various different reasons.
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 O-M-E dot 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 100 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 150,000 to 300,000 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.
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 can sign in as a guest on an iPhone but then if you have it on Android you can, 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 who's 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 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.
You're going to people who actually want to hear the Gospel.
And so because of that it's very fruitful because of the fast paced nature of it.
And then another thing is that a lot of younger people use it, a lot of teenagers, college age,
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 at 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 Omi 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 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.
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 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 had got saved on there.
And I ran into him and he recognized me 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?
And at 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 saved. There have been many times where it's like the first person you talk to 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 saved.
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 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 can 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.
You can reach people from the United States, all over the United States.
I would say most people that I talk to who actually want to hear the Gospel are 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 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.
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.
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 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, you know, it's easy to criticize something like this or pick it apart.
But at the end of the day, you know, physically going out soldering, you're going to 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, uh, 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, uh, 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 the, the, 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, uh, 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. Revelation chapter 15, beginning in verse number 1.
Follow along silently with brother Dan as he reads.
Revelation 15, the Bible reads,
And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them is filled up the wrath of God.
And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mingled with fire.
And then that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints.
Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?
For thou only art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest.
And after that I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.
And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles.
And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever.
And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power.
And no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for this conference. Lord, thank you for the salvation this week.
Please fill Pastor Anderson with the Holy Spirit so that he may preach boldly from the Bible, so that we may be edified by the sermon.
I ask in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Man, this evening I'm only going to preach just a short sermon, because obviously it's our ninth service in five days.
We're all worn out. It's been super exciting, super interesting, educational.
And what I want to do tonight is just kind of give a quick overview of the whole conference.
My sermon tonight is basically just a synopsis of kind of what I personally took away from the conference,
sitting and listening to all these sermons and messages, because I know how it is.
It's Sunday. You might be forgetting some of the key points from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
And so I want to kind of just put it all together and give you something to take home from the conference tonight.
And maybe if people didn't listen to everything from the conference, I can give them some key points tonight.
So the first thing I want to bring up, and if you would flip over to Matthew chapter number 10.
Matthew chapter number 10 is this idea of common sense missions.
This is one of our core values at Faithful Word Baptist Church, common sense missions.
It has three components. Component number one is focus on places that are the most receptive.
Now look, we believe in preaching the gospel to every creature.
We believe in teaching all nations.
And if you go look at our soil winning map over there, you'll see that we have virtually shaded in the entire Phoenix area over there.
I mean it's the lion's share if it's already done. Obviously we're still finishing that.
But that includes a lot of unreceptive areas.
So obviously we believe in giving the gospel to everybody.
We do go to those richer areas or more elderly areas or areas that are less receptive.
We go everywhere, but what did I say? Focus.
We want to focus on the places that are the most receptive.
Meaning that, you know, if you look at that map, yeah, we did everything, but the receptive areas on that map have literally been knocked six, seven, eight, even nine or ten times in the cases of really receptive areas.
So we went first to the most receptive areas.
We went often to the most receptive areas, but we believe in going everywhere.
So obviously, look, we believe in going soil winning in places like Germany or Armenia that are not necessarily super duper receptive places.
But we still believe in going there and getting people saved. We want to teach all nations.
But what we really want to emphasize and focus and push people toward are the places that are really receptive.
And that ends up being a lot of times the Caribbean and the South Pacific right now, those are kind of two big ones that we're pushing with this conference, especially the South Pacific.
We talked about the Caribbean's the same way.
Where do we get this philosophy?
Well, the Bible says in Matthew chapter 10 verse 14, whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
And so Christ is talking about the fact that as they go out and preach, there are going to be places that are just not that receptive.
He says, shake the dust off your feet and move on to the next place.
And in the book of Acts, we see the Apostle Paul practicing this where he runs into Jews being unreceptive and he says, that's it, I'm going to the Gentiles, I'm done.
You guys aren't receptive. I'm going somebody who's receptive.
Look at verse 23, the second component of common sense missions besides focusing on places that are receptive is number two, focusing on places that are safe and legal.
Safe and legal.
Look at verse 23, it says, when they persecute you in the city, flee into another, right?
If you're getting persecuted, if you're getting arrested, if you're getting kicked out, if you're getting deported, hey, just go somewhere else.
Why? Because there are so many fish in the sea, there are so many places that are wide open for the gospel where it's totally safe, totally legal to go soul winning.
So then why would we put a lot of effort into a place where it's really dangerous or illegal or something like that?
And look, I strongly believe that once we've evangelized all the safe and legal places, God will open up those illegal places or those unsafe places.
Uh, and then number three, go places where you speak the language, right?
And the reason you say, come on, Pastor Anderson, why are you telling us these obvious things?
Well, that's why it's called common sense missions because these things are based on common sense.
Go where it's receptive, go where it's safe and legal and convenient, I could even add, and then go where you speak the language.
But let's face it, we got a lot of people in the old IFB pouring tons of money and resources and effort into training someone who doesn't speak a language to learn that language over the course of years.
It's like, why don't we just send that guy to somewhere where he speaks his language and send somebody who already speaks that language or at least get somebody who has the aptitude to learn languages and can learn it in several months on their own and whatever.
It just makes more sense. You know, you got a Chinese person who speaks Chinese, oh yeah, let's send him to an Arabic-speaking country. Right?
It just doesn't really make a lot of sense. You know, and then let's train him for years in the language and then have him quit after a few years.
It's just like, wow, what are we doing here, folks? So focus on places where you speak the language.
Here is the blessing of being an American who speaks English. You speak the most important language in the world.
Don't ever let anybody tell you that there's some other language out there that's bigger than English. English is the big one everywhere.
And every single day, more people are learning English. Every single day.
Look, I know that in the end times, foreign languages are still going to exist because the Bible keeps talking about tongues and languages in the book of Revelation.
But let me tell you something. The whole world is learning English as well. And obviously, other languages will always be out there.
But every single day, more people in Europe are speaking English. It's getting to where, if you look at certain maps of European countries, there are countries where 80% of the population speaks English.
70% speak English. And this was not the case in the past. When I went to Germany in 1999, nobody spoke English.
I mean, I went there and I would talk to teenagers and young adults and they spoke barely any English, very little.
And then now you go there and you run into tons of young people that speak English.
And so, here's the thing. Again, if we focus on the places that speak English now, places where the English is not as strong, like, for example, Armenia, the English isn't as strong right now.
But I would be willing to bet that 10 or 15 years from now, you're going to be able to go to Armenia and talk to tons of people in English because it's all trending toward English and Armenia.
The older generation is speaking Russian, you know, from the Soviet Union era, and then now the young people are all switching over to English.
I walked around the city of Yerevan and I would say like 50% of the signs on businesses that are written in the Armenian alphabet, you sound them out, though, and they're English words.
It's like mobile phone. You're like, what the? You know, you're expecting an Armenian word because it's like the cool, trendy thing to use English.
That's where it's going, my friend. Give it 10 or 15 years. So if we work hard now in 2025, 2026, places that already speak English, by the time we finish those, when we go back to these other places, boom, more people speak English.
You don't even have to learn a foreign language. Now, if you do speak Spanish, Latin America is some of the best soul winning in this world.
Spanish speakers are receptive to the gospel in this side of the world. I don't know about Spain. I've never been there.
But man, over here, places like Dominican Republic, Colombia, Mexico, those places are receptive to the gospel.
And even when you're in Phoenix, it seems like Spanish speakers are more receptive to the gospel than the English speakers.
And so if you're going to learn a language, Spanish is kind of the obvious choice, the no brainer, probably second most important language in the world.
Spanish, Latin America, super receptive. If you're a Spanish speaker, you know, you want to do missions, Mexico is right there. Rocky Point is a great place to go soul winning.
Lots of other wonderful little towns, Imariz, city of Hermosillo is a great place to go soul winning.
Also, FYI, Pastor Mejia out of First Works Baptist Church in LA, he takes a crew the last Saturday of every month, First Works Baptist Church does soul winning in Tijuana, just over the border in Mexico.
So there's a little mini missions trip happening last Saturday of every month out in Los Angeles. We do our Mexico Mondays from time to time.
And so Spanish and Latin America is great if you speak it. Okay, next point, DIY missions, right? Do it yourself missions.
And in the 21st century, we need to switch our focus from simply giving money, which is what we did in the previous generation.
When I was growing up, it was just all about just writing that check, faith promise, putting it in the plate. We need to start thinking about going ourselves, right, and doing it ourselves.
Now this does not replace church planting, right? So us going on a missions trip and just blitzing an area and getting a bunch of people saved does not replace church planting missions, right?
We believe in church planting missions and I think that Verity Baptist Church with Pastor Roger Jimenez has had some great examples of church planting missions, like for example in the Philippines.
And so that's great. We're for that. But let's face it, my friend, Baptist churches already exist in a lot of these places, okay?
So it's not like these places where we're going soul winning and doing these blitzes don't have a Baptist church. I mean if we win these people to Christ, a lot of times there's a Baptist church for them to go there, already there.
But is that Baptist church aggressively soul winning? Not necessarily, right? So we show up and we have a function, we have a purpose, we're fulfilling a role of getting people saved and evangelizing the loss that in many cases is not happening in that area or it's happening on a very small scale.
We show up, we bring our crew in and we're out there preaching to hundreds of people. We're going from person to person to person to person and we're trying to get as many people saved as we can.
And you say, yeah, but you didn't plant churches and you didn't do it. Yeah, but here's the thing, there's already a Baptist church. We're winning people to Christ and then we can just tell them, go to this Baptist church.
And it's already there for them. And whether they go or not is between them and the Lord.
Next point I want to make is that soul winning can still be effective even in a place where it's hard to get a good church going, right? So we were talking about Germany and obviously going and starting a church in Germany is great, we would love to do it, but it makes it hard with all the persecution, all the opposition from the government and things like that.
So it's hard for people like us to get a good church plant going in Germany, but you know what, that doesn't mean that we can't do great soul winning there.
And again, the soul winning club in Germany has proven that even in Germany, we think of Europe as being unreceptive and obviously it's not going to be as receptive as the Caribbean or something like that.
But yet over the course of many years, they've had several hundred people, many hundreds of people saved and so it can be done.
And so you can still do great soul winning even in a place where maybe we're not going to get a church planted.
And obviously there are already, again, existing Baptist churches in Germany. People might have to travel a little bit to get to them, but they're there.
And if we can go to a place like Germany, we can still get people saved, especially by talking to young people, right?
It's sort of like when you go to that rich neighborhood in Phoenix and you think, oh man, I don't think anybody's going to get saved.
Everybody's elderly, everybody's rich, but you know what? You run into that teenager, you run into that young adult, you run into that person that's the exception that proves the rule and it's all worth it.
That brings me to my next point. Look, if you would, at Luke chapter 12. And again, I'm just kind of going through a lot of material tonight because I'm trying to just kind of review and give an overview of everything that we talked about in this conference.
Kind of just refresh your memory about these things. Send you home, some of you that are from out of town, with a bunch of ideas and some teachings that we've gotten.
Next point I want to make is this, realize how good we have it in America. And therefore, be willing to make sacrifices.
Look what the Bible says in Luke chapter 12, verse 47, that servant, which knew his Lord's will, Luke 12, 47, and prepared not himself.
So he knew his Lord's will, but he didn't prepare himself. Neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.
And to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. And so the Bible is giving us this principle that unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required.
We in America have been given a lot. Okay? We have, and who gave it to us? God did. Right? Every good gift, every perfect gift is from above.
And coming down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. We have been blessed by God.
We've been endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
And guess what? We're fortunate to have a government that has enshrined those God-given rights for us in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So we've got all this freedom. Total freedom for Faithful Word Baptist Church to operate, to preach, to do soul winning, to just go totally unhindered.
You know, I think about in the book of Acts, no man forbidding him. It says of the Apostle Paul at the end of Acts 28.
We have that freedom. Not only do we have that freedom though, we have financial prosperity as a nation.
And here's why that's important. Because that means that we often have time off. Right? We're not working 6, 12 hour days just trying to barely make ends meet.
And then we come home so exhausted that we don't have time or energy to do anything. Now maybe you are doing that. And if so, keep on going, man.
You know, do what you got to do. But in general, most people, right, have the financial prosperity where they can work maybe 40, 50 hours at a job that's not exactly in a coal mine or something.
And so they can actually have the leisure and the time, the energy to go do something for God. You've got the time to go soul winning because you live in America, right?
You've got the finances to purchase the plane ticket to go do missions or to just, you know, put gas in your car and at least show up to a soul winning time.
Or drive here, drive there around the valley and go soul winning. And so we've been given a lot. We've been blessed.
God has given us so much opportunity, money, time. We've got knowledge. We've got information. We've got the tools. We've got the skills.
We can easily learn how to go soul winning, do soul winning, be successful. And so God expects us to do that, right? To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
And so we need to realize how good we have it in America. And I was really inspired to hear about people over in Germany being persecuted, having the police raid their home, and then they still show up to church the next week.
And then they still show up soul winning, right? They're getting in trouble. They're going through persecution. It doesn't stop them. Well, how much more should we in America who just have free reign, how much more should we be faithful to soul winning and work hard at these things, right?
So let's realize how good we have it in America and therefore be willing to make some sacrifices. Go to 1 Samuel chapter 14. Another thing I took away from the conference is that just a few people can do a lot.
A small number of people can do a lot, right? And we think about some of these missions trips that we heard about. Some of them had, you know, 50 some people on them, like the trip to Fiji.
And of course those are amazing trips that result in many, many hundreds of salvations. But then also, you know, we heard about some smaller trips, like just two guys, right?
In the case of Brother Cooper, Brother Larson, just small trips that we do all the time where we'll just send two guys, four guys, five people, little groups like that. Man, little is much when God is in it.
Look what the Bible says in 1 Samuel chapter 14 verse six. And Jonathan said to the young man that bear his armor, come and let us go over under the garrison of these uncircumcised.
It may be that the Lord will work for us, for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few, right? There's no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.
And his armor bearer said unto him, do all that is in thine heart, turn thee, behold, I am with thee according to thy heart. Man, just one good soul winning partner that says, yeah, man, I'm in, let's go.
And two people can do something great for God. Four people can do something great for God. It doesn't take a huge giant group of people. Just a couple people can do amazing things for God. It's exciting to think about that.
Go, if you would, to Luke chapter nine, the next thing I want to bring up, and I know I'm kind of rapid firing a lot of points, but that's the whole point of the sermon. I'm just giving the overview, just a review.
I just want people that are here tonight to grab hold of just one or two of these truths and let them be inspiring to you. Let them be motivating and transformative for you.
The next point I want to make is this. We need to realize there are a lot of saved Christians that are already out there and there are a lot of churches already out there that are doctrinally correct.
And I touched on this earlier, but we don't want to ever get this attitude that, you know, we're the only ones, right? And look, it's natural to feel that way sometimes, to feel like it's just us.
And remember, Elijah felt that way. He said, man, I'm the only one left and they're trying to kill me. And what did God say to him? Nope, I've reserved unto me 7,000 men that have not bowed the knee to Baal.
And so there are always more people out there than we think that are saved, more people out there, more good churches. Just because we haven't heard about them doesn't mean that they're not out there.
So we don't want to get this attitude that we're the only ones. You know, going to Armenia, I brought up a lot of good things about Armenia this morning. I brought up some bad things.
I hope people didn't get a negative idea because I brought up some of the bad things. Because Armenia really was a really cool place. And Yerevan in particular was a really cool city.
I would love to go back sometime, especially if I can get better at the language first. I did the best I could with the time and the resources that I had. But, you know, over the course of the next few years, I'd like to get better at the language, go back and be more effective with more of a grasp of the language.
But it's funny. When I went to that church in Yerevan and I talked to the pastor, the very first thing that the pastor said to me when I met him was he checked and made sure that I believed in the Trinity.
And then the second thing he said was, you're not one of these pastors that's for homosexuals, are you? And I thought this was hilarious, you know, just in light of who I am.
And so this guy didn't know me. He don't know me, son. And so basically he said, you know, you're not one of these pro-homo pastors, are you? I said, no, no, no. I said, I was kicked off of YouTube for being a little too negative toward the homos.
And he's like, oh man, you got to keep doing that. Praise God. You know, because in Armenia, there was no homo stuff anywhere. Like that just wasn't a thing. Thank God.
But it's kind of sad at the same time because it kind of shows that, oh, you're from America? Well, you're not one of those pro-homo woke pastors, are you? Because unfortunately that's a reputation that America is getting now.
And the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written because unfortunately America is getting that reputation for being a bunch of fag-loving idiots.
But anyway, uh, brother Akinosho, you know, I just want, I just bring that up to say, you know, that was a good church, right? Good church. People there were, were friendly. People there were doctrinally sound.
And so it was, it was great to be at that church. And, uh, and they even had some strong feelings about some things that we have strong feelings about, right? Because we, you know, we're big on the Trinity and we're big on preaching against the sodomites.
So those were like two things where it was just like, boom. Yeah, I'm with you. And then, uh, you know, brother Akinosho talked about local pastors and churches that they were able to work with and preach for and be a blessing to.
And, uh, look what the Bible says in Luke chapter nine, verse 49. And John answered and said, master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name and we forbade him because he followeth not with us.
And Jesus said unto him, forbid him not for he that is not against us is for us. Right? And so here's the thing. There are some churches out there that are against soul winning, right?
They're against soul winning. They're negative about soul winning. They criticize soul winning. And you know what? Those people are wicked and those churches are trash. Sorry.
But a pastor who's against soul winning is wicked. Okay. No question about that. But there are a lot of churches out there that they don't have soul winning, but they like it or they're at least looking at it as okay, that's good that you guys are doing that.
And you know what? If that's what the situation is where they, they don't want to attack it, but you know, they're just not doing it, but they like the fact that you're doing it, you know, you can work with that.
Right? And you can attend those churches. You can be a blessing to those churches. You could fellowship with them and you can send your converts to those churches, right?
If you win somebody to Christ, you can send them to those churches where they can be fed in the things of God and get the word of God and get fellowship and everything.
So we don't want to be super negative toward churches that are not exactly like us. Right? And look, we strongly believe that every church needs to have soul winning, right?
Every church needs to have soul winning. But at the end of the day, sometimes in these areas, beggars can't be choosers. And so we need to be tolerant and understand that, hey, maybe these people just need to learn or grow and whatever.
Hey, at least if they're not against us, then they're for us, you know, because they've got the right gospel, they got the right doctrine, and at least they're not against soul winning.
They like the fact that we're doing it. They'll take the converts that we send their way. You know, we got to be willing to work with people like that.
So we don't want to get an us against them mentality that, hey, if you're not new IFB, then you're nothing. You know, we don't want to get that kind of a silly attitude because here's the fact, let's face it.
Before Pastor Anderson or any of my pastor friends ever came along, people were already serving God, winning souls. The gospel was going around the world and people were being saved before any of us were born.
And after we're all gone, and after all our churches are all gone, the gospel will still be being preached and going forth and the work of God will continue to go on.
So we are being used in this generation and we're not the only ones. So we don't want to get this attitude that we're the only ones. That's a silly attitude. It's just factually incorrect.
But the other thing I took away from the conference, of course, was this idea of the cruise ship style missions trip. Okay. And look, I'm not going to lie to you. My whole life I've always thought that cruises were stupid.
You know, this is just, this is not like a doctrine or anything. It's just like me personally. I'm just like, you know, whenever I saw cruises advertised, I'm like, whatever. I don't need that. I'm not interested in that.
But I'm not going to lie. Now I'm like, I want to go on one of those cruises and go on one of these trips. Like this is the, I never thought I'd become like a cruise guy or something, you know, and I've still never been on one.
But, you know, when I heard about this idea, I heard about this idea many months ago. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. And then seeing it successfully be executed and hearing about it, I'm super stoked about this.
And I think this is one of the highlights of the conference is this idea of this cruise. And if you didn't get to hear this, it was on Friday night, so you could go back and get the recording and listen to Brother Kevin explain that on Friday night.
But I'll just briefly tell you is the idea here is you get on one of these cruise ships that stops at a different port every day. And you can literally go soloing in a different country every day.
So these Caribbean cruises will hit like five or six different ports in one week. And these are English speaking, poor, receptive countries.
Now look, when you get off the boat, you're in some tourist area and whatever, and everybody's trying to sell you something. You literally walk for 10 minutes. You don't even necessarily need a vehicle every time.
You walk for 10, 15 minutes and boom, you are in another country. You are not in the tourist zone. You're seeing everyday people. Many times they are the most receptive demographic because the Caribbean often be like that.
And so you go to each port and I mean, they put in a port for what do they give you, like 10 hours typically, 12 hours? About 10 hours typically, right? So it's like, okay, you got 10 hours at this port. Think about what you can do in 10 hours.
Right? You can easily do a few hours of soloing, take a leisurely break, have lunch, buy your souvenirs, take your photos, do a couple more hours of soloing. I mean, so much time.
And it's just like we just waste so much time in our lives, right? But if you really look at time as a commodity and say, okay, I got 10 hours and you plan it out, man, you could do a ton.
You could literally even get a taxi if you wanted to and go to a town an hour away. You got 10 hours. You could literally go to a place an hour away, do soloing for a few hours, eat the meals, have the fun, take the pictures, come back.
I mean, look, you could do a lot. And the cool thing is, hey, if the country's unreceptive, no harm, no foul because we're going to be somewhere else tomorrow.
You're getting all kinds of great recon because you're finding out which countries are good for soloing, which Caribbean islands are good for soloing.
Kids in the Caribbean, like sometimes every island's like its own country, you know. So you hit each of these places. You figure out which ones are no bueno.
You figure out which ones are receptive. You're doing recon. You're getting people saved. And you're having fun because you're getting wined and dined, not literal wine unless you're talking about grape juice, amen.
But you're getting wined and dined on the ship and you're enjoying the relaxation of what the ship has to offer and then you're also doing all this work for the Lord and the cost is incredible.
I mean, they talked about it on their trip. It ended up costing like a thousand bucks a person. When you're going two by two where you can bunk up two people to a room, that's usually how they try to sell these things is like to two people.
You could get the flight and the cruise out the door. You could do this trip for like a thousand bucks, okay?
And so if we think about, you know, just to kind of maybe abuse your math a little bit, but, you know, there were five of them on this trip and he said it was like about a thousand bucks a person or whatever.
So let's just say five grand and they got like approximately ninety people saved for five grand. That's like a hundred and eighty bucks of salvation.
That's incredible. Think about that. I mean, is my math wrong? Somebody help me out. I might've just had a big math fail.
I might be, uh, is, is my math right or wrong? What's that? Oh, I screwed up. It's $55 of salvation. I'm up here lying about this.
Okay. So it's, yeah. So it's what? 5,000 bucks, 90 salvations. It's been a long week. 55 bucks of salvation? Okay. Well, that's even better.
Who cares, man? I'm sorry about my, uh, math fail, but either way is, is a good deal.
But think about that, man. I think back to when I was 18 years old, I saved up a couple grand when I was 18 to go do missions in Germany and everything.
But keep in mind, like a couple grand back then would be like probably five grand now or six grand now. You know, think about how just some young people, guys in their twenties, single guys, whatever, you know, couple guys could team up on something like this.
And I don't care if they're going to an old IFB church. I don't care where they're going to church. They could team up and do an incredible missions trip like this.
And, uh, and, and they could really be greatly used by God. And so the possibilities are endless. I mean, even, and I was, I was thinking about this, families could go because you could literally have the, the, the women in the, you know, you could have the women on the ship taking care of the kids.
The guys go out soul winning for a few hours. And then if it's a safe place, you can even trade off and then have the guys take care of the kids, send the ladies out soul winning for the afternoon session while the dudes are chilling out.
I mean, this could work. The possibilities are endless because it's not just the Caribbean. I mean, this could work for the South Pacific. There's a cruise that goes to like Tuvalu, Fiji, Vanuatu, all these places.
But even I was thinking about there are Mediterranean cruises. There are cruises that hit various islands of Greece and things. There are cruises in Scandinavia, the cruises in South America, Latin America.
I mean, if you're a Spanish speaker, there are all kinds of cruises that hit all these Spanish speaking ports. Uh, you know, you can think about Africa. I mean, the possibilities are endless.
I was thinking about what if like a hundred people just decided to jump on this idea in 2025, right? What about a hundred people who are hearing about this online in our church?
What if a hundred people decide, you know, I'm going to give this a shot. Imagine how we could literally get people saved in just scores of countries and get people out there having fun, winning souls.
I mean, I think it is such an incredible idea and so I'm pretty excited about it.
Uh, the next thing that I took away from the conference is that you need to live for God in general if you want to be effective at missions. Go to Second Peter chapter one.
Second Peter chapter one. If you want to be effective at missions, if you want to be effective at soul winning, you need to live for God in general.
Okay. And I'm thinking of Brother Segura's sermon where he was talking about praying and obviously we know that prayer is a key component when it comes to winning souls, right?
Because we're, we're praying to be successful. We're praying for God to lead us. We're praying for the Holy Spirit to go before us and work in the hearts of people and get people ready to hear the message.
And what does the Bible say in first John three 22 whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight, right?
That's how we get our prayers answered is by keeping his commandments and doing those things that are pleasing in God's sight.
And you know, the new evangelical movement has failed because they're just all about reaching people.
And it's kind of ironic that the people are just all about reaching people are reaching less people than the ones who preach the whole Bible.
Because we're not just only all about reaching people. We are strong on missions. We're strong on soul winning, but that's not all we're about.
We're about preaching hard against sin. We're about preaching the whole Bible. We're about teaching doctrine. We're about doing the whole council of God.
And then you have the new evangelical movement that just says, oh no, just put all that aside. Let's put aside all that doctrine and hard preaching and all that stuff.
And let's just be all about reaching people. And then what do they fail to do? They fail to reach people.
And we end up going out there and talking to their own church members and explaining to their own church members how to go to heaven.
And we run into person after person after person from these churches that isn't saved. We give them the gospel.
And we're supposedly the ones that are not prioritizing the lost. We're not seeker sensitive.
But then isn't it interesting how the seeker sensitive types are so bad at evangelizing and so bad at reaching people. Why is that? It's kind of ironic, right?
And I remember being a young teenager and being in these new evangelical type churches. And so I had this mentality because I'd been, you know, this is what I'm hearing constantly and what I'm learning.
And I remember having this mentality and thinking like, hey, it's just all about reaching people. It's just all about reaching people. We need to put aside some of these other things and not focus so much on these other things in the Bible.
It's just all about reaching people. But it's funny when I got into a hellfire and damnation Baptist church that actually preached a bunch of unpopular things.
And, you know, was just ripping on this sin and that sin and teaching all kinds of doctrine and exposing false teachers and false prophets. That was the only time I actually started reaching people.
Was hooking up with the crowd like that. Isn't that ironic? It's true though. Why is that? Well, guess what? You got to have the whole package if you want to be effective at reaching people.
Look what the Bible says in second Peter chapter one, verse four, whereby are given unto succeeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
And beside this, giving all diligence, watch this, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge, right? Look, we don't want to just be saved and living a good life.
We also want to learn the Bible. We want to have knowledge. Oh, all that Bible knowledge. And I've sat in these new evangelical churches and had them act like Bible knowledge isn't important.
It's not important to have all this knowledge about the Bible. It's just, you just got to have the relationship, man. It's just all about reaching people and everything.
And, you know, we don't want to get you into, you know, Bible knowledge. And you have people kind of poo poo this idea of going deep in Bible study.
But you know what? No, we do want to add to our virtue knowledge. And then we want to add to knowledge temperance, right? We want to add to temperance patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness charity.
We want to have a well-rounded Christian life where we're living a Christian life, not just, hey, we're good at reaching people. No, my friend, we've got to get the sin out of our lives and follow all these other things.
We want to follow all things that Christ taught us. Doing all things whatsoever Christ commanded us. Why do we need to have this whole package of faith, virtue, temperance, knowledge, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity?
Why do we need the whole tamale? Because the Bible says, if these things be in you, verse 8, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Look, you've got the right knowledge, you've got the right doctrine, but you don't want to be unfruitful. You don't want to be barren. We've got some sterile Christians out there.
They're sterile, they're barren, they're unfruitful. How many times do we read in the scriptures of a woman who's barren? And sometimes it'll be like, she's barren and she bare not.
It'll just double tell you, look, she's really barren. Now that's talking about physically. She's unable to have children, right?
But what we're talking about here, with being unfruitful and barren, we're talking about spiritually barren, spiritually unfruitful, meaning you're not reproducing.
Right? And we as Christians want to reproduce. Christians beget Christians. And so we want to get out there and we want to be fruitful and multiply as Christians.
We want to reproduce. We don't want to be barren nor unfruitful in our knowledge. Okay, well then that means knowledge isn't going to be enough, is it? No, we're going to need virtue.
We're going to need temperance. We're going to need brotherly kindness. We need the whole package. And so this is why neo-evangelicalism has failed. They don't have the whole package.
They're only preaching part of the Bible. They're only teaching part of the Christian life. And therefore they end up being barren and unfruitful and we have to win their own church members to the Lord.
Let alone them evangelizing the community or the world. You know, they can't even evangelize the people in their own congregation. We typically have to bring the gospel to those people.
And I guarantee you if you went to the pastor of a lot of these fun center churches and questioned him, he'd be dead on about salvation.
I've looked at the doctrinal statements of some of these mega churches, and obviously some of them are doctrinally wrong of course, but I've looked at the doctrinal statement or listened to the pastor or talked to the pastor of some of these fun centers and he's dead on on salvation.
But yet he's failing to evangelize his own congregation, let alone the community, let alone the world. Why? Because you can't have this attitude that says, hey, let's put aside doctrine, put aside the hard preaching, put aside the preaching on sin and let's just focus on reaching people.
You know, it's ironic. You'd think that if you just focused on that one thing, you'd be really good at it. But you know what? Turns out that being just a well-rounded person actually makes you more effective as a Christian.
And you know, this is one of my core values personally. I strive for balance in my life. I'm constantly striving for balance.
And I don't want to become a person who's a cake, like the Bible says, a cake not turned, right? The pancake that's overdone on one side and the other side's still raw, right?
We want to have balance in our lives. And so we don't, I never want to be the guy that's just known for one thing.
Like, oh, well, you know, that's just the, that end times guy. He just only talks about end times. No, man, because we want to have the whole package, right?
We want to be into soul winning. We want to be into studying the Bible. We want to be into preaching hard on sin. We want to be into clean living.
But we also want to be into kindness, love, forgiveness, right? We don't want to be judgmental. We want to have all these good attributes all balanced, right?
And I'm constantly, you know, I love the question, even though the rich young ruler is bozo and, and, and, you know, doesn't end up getting saved.
Hopefully he did later, but he probably didn't. Even though the rich young ruler is kind of a bozo, I kind of like one thing that he said, what lack I yet?
I kind of just like that question. And I always ask myself that question, like, what am I lacking? What do I need to work on?
What area in my life is, is weak? You know, and, and because I was born in the eighties and, and spent way too much time watching TV and playing video games, I kind of have, my brain is kind of wired in a certain way.
And I'm constantly thinking about like these video game stats where it's like, you know, you got the different stats, you got the strength, you got the intelligence, you got wisdom, you got courage, you know, you have all these little stats on your character and everything like that.
And it's like, you know, I'm always trying to think about like, which of my stats needs work? You know, because I may need to do some XP grinding on a certain stat.
And some of you geeks out there know what I'm talking about. One geek is out there because I heard, I heard somebody say amen.
All right. So I want to end on this last thing, James chapter one, the last thing I want to say, I just hit you kind of rapid fire. This isn't a typical sermon because I, I usually try to keep my sermons more focused, but this kind of, uh, overview is a little bit all over the place on purpose.
Cause I'm just trying to kind of refresh your memory about a lot of the great things that we learned and heard, uh, throughout the conference. But I want to just end on this thought.
I want you, whether you're a local here from faithful word or whether you're a visitor from out of town, I want you to decide that you're going to take action.
Decide to take action. We heard some great stuff this week. Decide to take action. Look what the Bible says in James 1 22, but be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceive in your own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass for he beholdeth himself and go with his way and straightway forget of what manner of man he was, but who so looketh into the perfect law of Liberty and continue it therein.
He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work. This man should be blessed in his deed.
I think that some of the things that have been said at this conference would probably be worth going back and listening to again.
Okay. Because there's a lot of good information, especially like, you know, people that are interested in the Omi TV thing, you know, that's probably worth going back and listening to again.
The cruise ship, uh, seminar is probably worth going back and listening to again. Uh, some of these other sermons, all of them actually, you know, when you're thinking about, if you're thinking about any of these plays, if you're thinking about,
if you're thinking about the South Pacific, you know, I mean, I was thinking like, I need to go back and listen to brother Akinosho again, because I was trying to, I was trying to like keep Vanuatu and Tuvalu straight in my mind.
And I was getting a little mixed up because I want to know what's out there. And if you're interested in one of these places, hey, there's a lot we could go back and listen to again and, and, and get that information and so forth.
But at the end of the day though, the best way to retain what we've learned this week is to put it into practice, right? That's the best way to, to retain is to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only.
So what's the action that you need to decide to take? Well, if you don't know how to present the gospel, here's my challenge. I just have one challenge to you.
One thing for you to take away from the conference. Here's the action I want you to decide to take. I want you to decide that you are going to learn how to present the gospel.
That you are going to learn how to effectively present the gospel. Look, I got saved as a six year old boy, but I did not know how to effectively present the gospel until I was about 17.
Okay. And I, before that I was really bad at it. I didn't really know what I was doing. So learn how to effectively present the gospel. We've got the videos, we've got the seminars, email the church. We'll give you the, we'll give you all the materials. It's all free.
Everything's free. We'll give you that tool. The best way obviously is to go out with a variety of people's soul. Don't just go with one guy, you know, and just think, oh, this isn't for me or something.
Go out with a variety of people, see the different styles and learn how to go soul winning. Okay. That's one challenge. You're like, I already know how to do that. Well, great.
Number two, get involved in soul winning locally. That's an action that you could decide to take. So either number one, learn how to give the gospel. Number two, get involved locally.
Or number three, go on, decide that you're going to go on a mission strip, right? If you're, you know, if you, if you've already learned how to give the gospel, you're already involved locally. Hey, stay involved locally.
You can just make a decision that says, I am going to be faithful locally. I can't go on a mission strip. I don't want to go on a mission strip. I like my food. I like my bed. I like my routine.
I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to go on a cruise ship. I don't want to go to Columbia and I don't want to go to these places. I'm just going to stay right here.
We'll then make a decision that says, I will be faithful. I will keep going. I will get out there on a weekly basis and I'm going to be the guy that five years from now is still going soul winning.
But maybe you're here tonight and a good action for you to decide to take is to go on a mission strip at some point if you can.
Or organize your own. And like I said, I would love to see this happen and I'm going to pray for this. I'm going to pray that 100 people will get excited about that cruise ship idea.
And get out there and hit these port cities and just absolutely just rock them with the gospel and just, and just hit them so much that you're going to have to start taking a cab because the local area has been hit so many times.
Right? The Caribbean just gets hit so many times. It's going to be like, yeah, go to that island in the Caribbean, but be sure you take the cab 45 minutes away because everything by the port there has been hit.
Because so many people heard that, that, about that lobster and steak and five desserts or whatever and got, got all pumped up about it.
Man, I would love to see people grab hold of this idea and experiment with other areas like the South Pacific.
Find out where are the cruises that are hitting English speaking receptive port cities and experiment. And I would love to get emails throughout the year of 2025.
Emailing the church saying, all right, we did the recon. Here's what we did. These are the cities we hit. These are the places that were receptive.
Look, I would love to even just get an email telling me this place sucks and I'm never going back because then I can just be like, check it off our list. Don't go there.
And so I would love to see you tonight, whoever you are here locally listening online to decide to take action.
Learn how to soul win, get involved locally, or if you're already involved locally, decide that you're going to stay plugged in, stay faithful.
Set yourself a standard of, Hey, I want to keep going. I don't want to miss or get involved in a mission strip or even organize your own mission strip.
Look, we are not control freaks around here. Okay. Pastor Anderson is the biggest non control freak in the world. Okay.
I barely even tell my staff what to do. They, they have to, they have to ask me what to do because I don't even tell them.
Okay. And what do I mean by that is that we're not, we don't have this attitude that says like, you got to go on our program and, and, and we got to organize it and we got to sanction it.
You got to look, we have people in our church all the time. They just organize their own missions trips. They just organize their own soul winning trips.
And, and they have our blessing. They don't have to get permission to get a bunch of guys together and just go to someplace and do so any missions.
So look, obviously the church, uh, is going to organize you and send you places and stuff, but you know what?
You have my permission to organize your own stuff and just get together with other people in the church and nobody's going to stop you from going soul winning anytime, anywhere, unless people are in there.
Right. That was what brother Sigora taught us. I was just seeing if you were listening. All right, let's pray.
Dear Lord, thank you so much for this great conference, Lord, all the wonderful things that we've learned and, uh, Lord God, we, we, we just pray that, uh, everyone is inspired.
I know that a lot of people have been inspired this week and are excited. That's why we put the conference on.
And Lord, if people come out of this conference excited about soul winning locally and excited about going on mission trips, then our conference was a success because that was the goal.
And Lord God, I pray that you would continue to stir in hearts even as people maybe go back and re-listen to certain sermons or, or maybe new people listen to them online in the coming weeks.
I pray that these sermons would light a fire in the hearts of people, that they would go out and do great works for you in the year of 2025.
Lord, bring us back safely next year so that we can rejoice about the great works of 2025 and in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
All right, let's take our hymnables for one last song here. Let's turn to song number 261. Song number 261, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Song number 261.
Oh, so are you weary and troubled. No light in the darkness you see.
There's light for a look at the Savior. There's light for abundant and free.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely clear. In the light of His glory and grace.
Through death into life everlasting, we pass and we follow Him there.
For our sin no more has no meaning. For more than the cupboards we are.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely clear. In the light of His glory and grace.
His Word shall not fail you, be promised. We'll be here and all will be well.
Then go to a world that is dying. His perfect salvation to tell.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely clear. In the light of His glory and grace.
And the things of earth will grow strangely clear.
In the light of His glory and grace.