Tulip Time Evangelism Outreach and Open Q&A with founder Jon Neifert and Brad Tower

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One, two, three. Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

00:22

Well, good evening, everyone. How are you doing tonight? And obviously you see here, this is Anthony Silvestro showing up tonight, opening the show.

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Normally we're blessed with Andrew opening every night, and I'm not sure if Andrew's showing up tonight.

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He told me he was going to, and it looks like Andrew, okay, I gotta bring him in first thing.

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So Andrew normally is going to show up like 30 seconds before the show starts, so he can open, and which

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I love for him to open. For whatever reason, he let me do it tonight, so let me add him in here. I'm usually here half an hour before, so.

00:56

Well, that's true, yeah. But I'm having trouble with, for some reason it wants to connect to my iPhone.

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I don't know why. Well, we don't want that, so. I know, and I'm trying to figure, I've been trying to fix it, so.

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Let's get that going, so. So I'm really excited. I'm gonna let you bring up the music.

01:16

Cue the music. You did cue the music. I already, you missed all this, Andrew. I'm not hearing you, hold on.

01:21

All the music, we're live. So. Okay, now I hear you. Okay, go ahead.

01:29

I'm glad you hear us now. So we are going to bring in our first guest, as Andrew is, so normally

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I'm the one who has all these issues, technical difficulties, so. Well, it's because I'm usually here half an hour and fixing them all, if there's any issues.

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And usually I'm coming on later and not fixing them on time, but let me bring our guests on. First guest,

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John Niefert, how are you today? I am doing well. So great to be here,

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Anthony, Andrew. Hey, before we bring the guests in, I do have to make some corrections from last week.

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Uh -oh. Hey, if I make a correction, if I do say something wrong, I gotta correct it, so.

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Or in this case, we didn't have a show last week. For some reason, I thought

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Anthony was going to be doing this show last week.

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And so people were like, is there a show? I'm like, yeah, Anthony's doing it. And because I was still recovering from being sick,

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I was like, okay, I'm just, I won't join the show because Anthony's covering it. And so forgive me for not having a show last week.

02:36

It was my fault. I did not look at the dates and see that Anthony had scheduled it for this week.

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So that was an error on my part. Yeah, I found that out afterwards. I saw his tag on that Facebook post and I'm like, uh -oh.

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Yeah, I'm like, Anthony's doing it. I had a man going on with what I was trying to do.

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Actually, what it was is we had to meet with the accountant the next day and we had to get all the Striving Fraternity books all ready for him.

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So I was busy doing that and I said, okay, well, I got something I gotta be doing. So, all right, so real quick,

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Bill is saying, Andrew, I noticed you're letting your hair grow out. No, actually, I cut it short again, but I will state for the record, and we can look at Anthony, look at me and see, one of us has our hair growing back in better than the other,

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I'm just saying. Yeah, yours is going a little faster than mine, but that's okay, it's still growing in. Yeah, no, it is, and I, because folks knew that we cut our hair for that, but I shaved it a second time just to do that.

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So yeah, the Dr. Bragg thing is working. Maybe you should switch over. I know, so I'm doing mine, I'm trying to do mine naturally with essential oils, and Andrew is using

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Dr. Berg's actual kit, which is the same one that Drew Vanita just bought.

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So he just started it. Because he saw this. He saw you, right. So that's really cool that it's working, and yeah,

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I'm probably gonna have to switch over entirely. I think you're winning, and so.

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I told my friend, one year, one year, I'm gonna keep my hair really short for one year, but if it fills in, hey, great.

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Then we won't have what we had up by you in Cleveland, preaching on the campus of the

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University of Cleveland, where the guys were up on the staircase up above making fun of me because my hair was falling out, and I just looked at them and said, you're gonna wish you had this much hair when you're my age.

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That's right. I mean, obviously, John doesn't have to worry about that. No, John's got plenty.

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Some people are just blessed with that. What else did you wanna cover, Andrew, before we get into the topic tonight?

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There was something else, but I didn't write it down, so. Okay. I don't remember. I mean, that's fine.

04:54

Let me bring our next guest on as well, and then I'll let you go. So let me, I'll say it real quick.

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So go check out Andrew Rapport's Rapp Report from Wednesday. It is on the tyranny of California shutting down a

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Christian ministry that they actually used to help. And so there's a bunch of guys who are in need, or actually a family in need of help.

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And actually here is the man commenting, and that's Haps Addison. There's a

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GoFundMe for them to move to a better state like Idaho. So yeah,

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I wanna encourage everyone to go to, Andrew Rapport's Rapp Report, go listen to that one. Next week will be on my trip from Israel.

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So for folks who've been wanting to hear more detail, that's the one to go to. Yeah, that'll be an exciting show.

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Hopefully I'll be able to tune into that one. But so anyways, tonight we've got

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John Niefert from Iowa, Pella, Iowa, which is, we're gonna get into that a little bit more this evening.

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I'm gonna bring one more guest in who is new to the show, although you've commented before, Brad Tower. How we doing?

06:05

So - But not new to us. We love this show, right? That's right. And we all, if I remember correctly,

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I think we all met at Ambassadors Academy. Is that right? Yes. And so we've all served as team leaders, and I think we're all going to serve again this

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June as team leaders. I was going to. I had to back out because we got a baby coming.

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Wow, that's a good excuse. What a lame excuse, man. I know, I know. And it hurt so bad because originally

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I committed. I love those things, and I was so excited. And then I was really excited to see it was during the summer, not during my school year, like it was last year.

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So I was like, oh, I'm all set. And then I realized, one, it's during my son's birthday. He's going to be six. I don't really want to miss that.

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And then, but my wife will be about seven months pregnant at the time with our four other littles. So it just wasn't the best time.

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And man, it hurts because I love going to those. Yeah. I hope they'll bring me back and not forget about me.

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Yeah, maybe next year. Well, we'll plug in their ear your name a few times. Yeah, and Andrew.

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Andrew was my team leader the first year I did the Ambassadors Academy. So he must've trained me well.

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Well, the thing is, is Anthony and I kind of bring our teams together because we just have, we have different styles.

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I was talking to someone today about it. And yeah, they just, someone who goes out with Anthony and he's just, he's more mild mannered.

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And he's like, Anthony's just so bold and strong. I don't know if I could do that. And so he was like,

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I think I'm more like, I think I'd be more like you at just asking questions. And that's why we bring our teams together because Anthony and I have two different styles when doing evangelism.

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Neither one of them, I would say is wrong or right. It's just different personalities. We would both be against the screechers, right?

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But the, and when I say screechers, I'm talking to those guys that just yell at people. And you've seen them on college campus.

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That's what most people think of with open air evangelism. But yeah, so we kind of just always lead together for that reason.

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Yeah. And it's been fun, you know, for people to see our different styles and be able to learn that way.

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And we're in contact still with a lot of people that have been on our teams over the last several years. So that's been, it's been really neat too, to watch.

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We got to plan another reunion. We would plan a reunion, get everyone together. And we haven't done that, so.

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Yeah, we do need to. I'll have to invite everybody over to your house before I tell you and your wife about it. Yeah, like last time.

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Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, my wife really appreciated that. Hey guys, we're going to all do this at Andrew's house.

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He doesn't know this yet. It'll be this weekend and his wife doesn't know it either, but we're going to have a great time. Yeah, it worked.

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My team from this year have stayed really well connected. And so we text back and forth, you know, fairly frequently.

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And then we actually have a Zoom call or whatever every two to three months.

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And you just catch up on what each other are doing and how the outreach is going and all that.

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So that's been really good. Yeah, that's great. So before we get into this, you know,

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Andrew and I will be teaching together at a conference called the Michiana Reforming Families Conference at the end of April, Pastor Kevin James.

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And that'll be just outside of South Bend, Indiana. So if you're in that area, where can they go for the website?

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It is just Michiana Reforming Families. Yeah, I think so. I think that's what it's called. If not, you know, you can text us and find us.

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It's a free conference. So they're just asking for donations for it. But that should be an excellent conference.

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Hearts for the Lost and Striving for Eternity are teaming together on Friday night to teach evangelism and lead some evangelism teams out into South Bend, Indiana, which is very heavy

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Catholic. That is Notre Dame territory. Saturday will be the family conference.

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And then Sunday, I'll be teaching Sunday school. Andrew will be preaching the gospel that day. So it'd be a great weekend.

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And then the following weekend is what we're getting into because I'll be driving from there out to Pella, Iowa.

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And an outreach that my wife has wanted to go to for years.

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And it seems like every year we have something going on that weekend. Not this year.

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What's happening? She's not coming. Yeah, well, she's coming this year. Okay, there we go.

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She is coming this year. But so we're really excited about this. So John, I'm gonna let you go first.

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I'm gonna let you talk about who you are, what your ministry is, and then probably hold off on tulip time until we let

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Brad talk. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, my name is John Neifert. I live just outside of Pella, Iowa.

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And I have done a number of different things, you know, ministry -wise over the years.

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I've always had kind of an urge and a passion within me to, you know, be missional and reach out to people.

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I struggled for many years. I read lots of different books, but just nothing ever really clicked until about seven, eight years ago.

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Right? And, you know, then that's about when I started the

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Tulip Gospel Outreach Ministry, which started pretty small. And then just over the years, it's been, you know, growing.

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But, you know, this is my side gig, right? It's a ministry

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I like to, you know, pour a lot of my time into. You know, really, really enjoy it. I really enjoy being able to share the gospel and have all sorts of different conversations with people.

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So that's, yeah. And you're doing a number of other outreaches now, right? I mean, because this year you've, you might want to tell everyone, you've got something really interesting planned, what you're doing around.

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Yeah, yep. And we really started here recently, and we're kind of just getting into it.

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So last year I had, I forget where the idea came from, but just the idea of saying, hey,

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I want to go and bring the gospel to the top 10 cities in Iowa. So earlier in the year,

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I reached out to a few different people. We sat down and we planned. I tried to spread out the different cities, you know, two or three weeks apart.

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And, you know, so I'm basically through the whole summer. But, you know, went out, found all the top 10 cities in Iowa population -wise, and we are done with three of them so far.

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So we started with the St. Patrick's Day parade in Des Moines. And then this last weekend, we went to Cedar Rapids, went to Green Square Park there, you know, by the library, had some good conversations.

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And then drop down just south of there was Iowa City. And we had some outreach, you know, lots of students from the

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University of Iowa there to interact with. And Brad joined us for part of the day as well.

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But we've got more coming up through this summer. I think we end the 23rd of September.

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So they're just kind of sprinkled out, you know, here and there, right? Part of this was just saying, hey, you know, this culture needs to hear the gospel, right?

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Part of it was saying, hey, I really got into the evangelism that I'm doing largely because I saw other people doing it, right?

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So hopefully, we're out there, we're visible. We can encourage others, you know, to get out and share the gospel as well.

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And what a really cool idea to be able to say, we're going to hit the top 10 cities in our state and go out and share the gospel and whoever wants to come, come.

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I'm putting on the screen for folks the how to get to the Michiana Family Conference. So it's

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BRBC, that's for the church, Michiana. So it's

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BRBC, M -I -C -H -I -A -N -A dot com.

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And from there, they have a link for the family conference. So that's what

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I was just getting that up there for you. Yeah. And I'll thank you.

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I'm going to, I might have you do, since I don't know how to do all that fancy stuff, I might have you do the same thing for the Tula time gospel outreach.

14:40

Okay. John, send me that link. Okay, I will do that. So Brad, go ahead and tell us about yourself.

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Yeah, my name is Brad Tower and I'm another Iowa guy. And I met

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John about, it was 2018, because I know you started the festival in 2017, if I got that right,

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Tula time. And I didn't go the first year, but I've been to all of them since. And so I've gotten to know John through that.

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I've been doing street evangelism for about 13 years now. Since 2010, a couple of my main places, the

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University of Iowa, I've been doing that for 13 years, especially in the fall and spring when the weather's tolerable.

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Those winter months are brutal. So nobody wants to hear me and I don't want to be there. So in December and January, not so much.

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But for the rest of the year, in the past, I usually tried to get there about once a week.

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That has changed a little bit since having all these kids. So about every other week right now on campus.

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And I also do things at Cedar Rapids Farmers Markets. I'm trying to get to all of those this summer.

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Ambassadors Academies, I've done four of those. My goodness, there's been a lot of things over the years.

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You kind of lose track like you guys do. But I preached at Super Bowls with sports fan outreach, done about four of those.

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But I'm trying to really be faithful locally. As I always tell people, you know, anybody can go.

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You know, sometimes people ask, like, how do you do all that? How do you preach in front of all those people at a Super Bowl? I'm like, guys, none of those people know me.

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Like, there might be thousands of them, but there's nothing to lose. They don't know me. Like, it's harder to do it right here in town when

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I have my students, my co -workers, people I grew up with. And they're like, what in the world is

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Brad doing? Preaching in the middle of the street at the Farmers Market, you know? Yeah. You guys know what that's all about.

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It's always interesting when I see a dental patient. Yeah, exactly. Across my path out in downtown

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Cleveland. Exactly. I get kids saying, is that Coach Tower? I'm like, hey, guys.

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You're a little crazy. And it is what it is. You kind of have to get over that, obviously. But then

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I'm also part of Arts for the Lost ministry. I heard you mention them. And I just joined with those guys about a year and a half ago.

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I'm on there part -time with those guys. So I got to jump into an outreach in Dallas last year, last summer.

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And then also in Pennsylvania. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So yeah,

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I'm trying to be very faithful locally more than anything right now. As well as doing these other things around the country.

17:24

Yep, absolutely. I have the same conviction. We've got all kinds of lost people here in Cleveland.

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Got some great college campuses to go to. I don't need to do a bunch of traveling to get right here.

17:37

All right, so you knew this was coming up, guys. I have to put this up. KT and Jesus, is there ever going to be another follow -up with Kevin Yant?

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The mention of Iowa reminds me, dot, dot, dot. We were just talking about this before the show went live.

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Because both of these guys have had run -ins, I guess you could say. But yes, we are planning on another show.

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I just talked to Kevin Yant maybe in the last two weeks. And as soon as he gets through some busy parts of his schedule with school here in the spring and early summer, he's going to devote some time.

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And we're planning on some time mid to late summer to doing a follow -up show.

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Yeah, part of that was my fault. You know, we do have some stuff where I'm supposed to be clipping the audio. And so I need to do that.

18:32

Yeah, well, you got time now. So it'll be mid to late summer, I think, is what we're targeting. So I'm excited for that.

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What I'm going to do here is I'll give the link for tulip time.

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Because the link that you sent is a long link. So from there, it's tulipgospeloutreach .org.

18:59

And then from there, you want to direct people, John, how to find out about it?

19:05

Yeah, just when you go to that main page, just below the header and headlines and stuff like that, there's events that they scroll by on a carousel.

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So if you see that first one pop up. I'll do it for people.

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And you can get to this right with a shorter URL. So I also am doing tulipgo,

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G -O for Gospel Outreach. Here we are. That makes it a little. There you go. So walk us through it.

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So we get to tulipgospeloutreach .org. And you see that carousel sliding back and forth there.

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There you got a picture of Tulip Gospel Outreach. Just click on that picture and it'll take you to the details around the outreach.

19:53

Okay. So they kind of overview stuff. Yep. Video from Eddie Roman on the

20:00

Way of the Master. And then kind of our schedule for the day. Yeah. So we've got Anthony coming out this year to provide some of the teaching.

20:09

So we got the event is free, but it's suggested they're not donation of $60 per person or sorry, $25 per person, $60 for family, just to cover some costs, but it is donation.

20:20

So you got a schedule out here for Thursday, Friday, and I think it was.

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Yep. So it's a three -day event. And right. So we try and get some training in in the morning and then take it out to the streets right away.

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There's a couple parades every day at the festival, which are great for just track distribution.

20:47

Yeah. So let's talk about this. Let's get into the Tulip Time Outreach, John. So what was your heart behind this and maybe give a little background to the city and what's so unique about this?

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Yep. Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about the background and how I got started with this.

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I told you, historically, I've had a passion around reaching the loss, but didn't really have a good way of doing that.

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And then once I got the vision, I started doing this. So we started doing this in 2016. But before that, we had tried a few other things.

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We got several of, I mean, probably a couple of hundred of the 180

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DVDs from Living Waters. And we tried to get some out.

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We left a bunch of them at the Christian bookstore, which is right downtown. Just said, hey, take them, give them to people for free, things like that.

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But it just didn't feel like it was very active in those things. But and actually, part of what gave me the vision was when we went and did the

21:59

Iowa State Fair Gospel Outreach. So every year, and Answers in Genesis is involved in this as well, right?

22:07

But it was started by a local guy here in Iowa. And it's been for 25 years.

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He's been doing an outreach there. So we have a booth, a 20 by 20 booth. It's got a model of the ark.

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It's got all sorts of materials and tracks, things like that. So doing that and seeing that,

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I said, okay, now I've got the vision. I can see what I can do, right? Things are a little bit different at the

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Iowa State Fair from Tulip time. But that's what kind of stirred things up a little bit.

22:40

All right. So then started that in 2016. We've been doing every year since, except for the one year they canceled because of COVID.

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But still, we had probably 10, 15 ,000 extra people in town that year anyway, even though the event was canceled.

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But one of the things I tied into, and here's where we've got, you know, an incredible history here that we can use to get people into conversations around the gospel.

23:11

We can start on spiritual topics, right? Transition in and go from there. Now, the town of Pella, it's about 10, 11 ,000 people, you know, population.

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But it's a tourist town. So every year for the past 86, 87 years or so, they have a

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Tulip Festival where they showcase two things, right? One is the tulips, right?

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And they've got, you know, lots and lots and lots and lots of tulips, right? There's other

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Tulip Festivals around the country, but they always try and bump up the game and get more tulips than everybody else, you know, things like that to, you know, attract people and so on.

23:53

But over the weekend, right, this town of 11 ,000 becomes a town of about 250 ,000.

24:00

Depending on the weather, right, it's going to vary in there. But you saw the picture of the event on the website.

24:06

There are people everywhere, right? So what I like to say is there's at least 200 ,000 opportunities for you to share the gospel.

24:13

But they highlight the tulips and the Dutch heritage. You know, those are the two key things that they focus on.

24:22

Pella itself has a lot of different things going on there, right? But Pella itself was founded by Dominy, right?

24:30

Which is Dutch for pastor or reverend, right? But there was a pastor,

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Henrik Pieterscholti, who came and immigrated from Holland during a lot of the persecution.

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And they sought to settle in America to build a free

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Christian community, right? They were facing a lot of persecution, right?

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Because in Holland at the time, the state had taken over the church.

25:03

The church was struggling, you know, they were having trouble paying pastors, all these different things. But then the state came in and took over, right?

25:12

Which everybody said, hey, great, we can pay our pastors now. We can write all these different things. But then they started changing things doctrinally and, you know, so on.

25:21

And, you know, many people, you know, including Scholti, sought to reform and, you know, from within and correct things.

25:32

But, you know, after, let's see, that started in 1834. They immigrated in 1847.

25:39

So, yeah, a good 13 years or so of fighting against the, you know, changes and the dumbing down of the theology and all that, right?

25:51

In fact, they, because it was under state rule, they had, you know, they put in different rules.

25:58

They would, if you didn't sing from their hymnals, they would come in and fine you. They would depose the ministers, right?

26:06

So that they could no longer preach and be legal and all of that. But there was a lot of different things that they were, they had soldiers quartered in their homes.

26:16

They couldn't, you know, so Scholti himself had a church and there was like 350 members. But they reenacted or started reinforcing the

26:27

Napoleonic rules where you couldn't assemble groups of more than 19.

26:33

So he couldn't hold a church of 350 people. You know, he had to meet with people 19 at a time, which is unrealistic, right?

26:42

Wow. Is Governor Newsom related to him or? Long lost relative, yes.

26:49

They all have the same Marxist agenda. So it's been around a long time. So sorry. Yeah, yeah.

26:58

But yeah, a lot of this goes back to, right? So there's a book out there that I read that talks a lot about him too.

27:06

So when I started seeing a lot of these things and getting more interested, right?

27:11

You know, I've done a lot of research on the Hollanders who, right?

27:16

The Dutch who came over and settled in America. What did they face, right? And both on this side of the ocean and that side.

27:26

But, you know, and anything I could find on Scholti, right? Because what you hear from, you know,

27:35

Pella and Tulip Time, you'll hear kind of a surface level coverage of things. They don't shy away from the

27:42

Christian heritage, but they don't treat it with a lot of depth. So they'll say, hey, you know, the

27:48

Hollanders were, you know, persecuted. You know, they didn't have freedom to worship. And that's about as deep as you go, right?

27:56

You know, from a secular, you know, standpoint. So that's where I have tried to dig in, you know, deeper to really help people understand that.

28:06

I've written five different tracks that are specific for this event, right?

28:12

So we can tell that story a little bit deeper, right? And then pressure them into, you know, the gospel message there as well.

28:20

Which is pretty fascinating to me that you have an outreach like this, this town doesn't double, triple, quadruple in size.

28:29

I mean, we're talking like 20 -some times the amount of people come to town for the weekend to see a bunch of tulips, which

28:36

I mean, don't get me wrong. I would love to go see a bunch of tulips. As a good Calvinist, you should, you know.

28:41

Okay, so you know how many people have asked me about this, this Tulip Time outreach, like, wow, it's named after Calvinism.

28:47

I'm like, no. No, there's actually tulips there.

28:54

It's really cool. There are actually tulips. It's actually about tulips and not Calvinism, not theology.

29:00

Yeah, right. So this is one of the tracks. So this is the first track I ever, you know, wrote. And it is about the tulips.

29:06

So these are actually tulips from Pella. I was telling someone, you know, earlier today, this is kind of a family effort, right?

29:16

I kind of wrote up, you know, some of the stuff and point to the beauty of the tulips and the beauty of God's grace, all those different things.

29:24

My son took the picture. My other son did the layout. My wife helped, you know, edit the material, you know, stuff there, right?

29:32

But some people will say you can't use tulip to present the gospel to people, right?

29:40

And I beg to differ. And that's exactly what I did here, right? I didn't present it as tulip in that order, but I just started with, hey,

29:50

God, and who is God, who is man, right? How are we saved?

29:55

We went through the different things. And then at the end, I transitioned around to, you know, the tulip acronym and, you know, so on.

30:05

And I've had a lot of, you know, really good, positive comments around this particular tract, you know, from, you know, from friends and family and, you know, other people that I don't know.

30:16

I was walking along and, you know, at tulip time one time, and I had a handful of those and some stranger just walked up to me and said, hey, can

30:25

I get one of those? And it just makes it so natural just to, you know, hand these things, right?

30:31

They're here to see the tulips. You can use that and, right, they get some depth, right? This is a 16 page, you know, thing where some of the other things, some of the other tracts, it's just, it's like a bill.

30:44

But this one actually shows, this is a mural that is in the public post office, right?

30:53

It shows three scenes of the immigrants from Holland. And if I can, yeah.

31:01

So over here you have them, right, being, you know, led in chains and handcuffed and all that, you know, their persecution in Holland, their ship ride over and then settling in with the community, with the church at the center.

31:19

You know, some of these things just give themselves out, right? But it's such a natural conversation starter and you can get to the gospel, you know, through those really easily.

31:30

So what's unique about this is that there's no open air preaching at this, right?

31:36

So this is all conversations and tracting. And of all the people that go,

31:42

I think if you've told me in the past that you're in conversations all day long, every day during the conference.

31:48

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yep, yeah. And we, yeah, we try, you know, we don't do open air, you know, primarily, we primarily focus on, you know, those individual conversations and the tracting.

32:08

And we also do have some, you know, we have a booth, right, which is a little bit different because then people come to you and then you can give them more significant materials, right?

32:18

But some of this goes back to, I'm a person in this community as well, right?

32:27

And the first year we did it, we had a booth and that went really well.

32:34

But then the next year, the Tulip Time Committee, you know, came to us and said, we don't want you to do this anymore.

32:42

You know, and that's where we got into some back and forth, right? And said, okay, you know, this is a

32:49

Second Amendment or not a Second Amendment, a First Amendment, you know, issue, right? We have freedom of speech, we can, you know, do all these things, right?

32:57

But, you know, we'll keep it low key. We're not here to disrupt the event.

33:03

We're here to share the gospel and be ambassadors for Christ. So that's a big reason why we've kind of limited to those individual conversations and so on.

33:15

Now, but yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. So how does the event schedule look for anybody who wants to come out and be part of this?

33:28

Yeah, so let's, I mean, we can talk about the festival itself first, right?

33:34

Because there's three days. There's different activities and things like that that go on, you know, each of the different days.

33:45

But they are trying to focus on, you know, the Dutch heritage. They have, you know, people doing

33:51

Dutch dancing with wooden shoes. You know, we've got the largest windmill, you know, largest working windmill in North America is here.

34:04

It was actually built in Holland, taken apart piece by piece, shift over and then reassembled here in Pella.

34:11

So it's a working windmill, meaning it's actually grinding wheat and you can get windmill bread at the bakeries, right?

34:19

Made from the wheat that's ground in that windmill, right? There are, you know, yeah, it is really.

34:31

And so then there's every day, every afternoon about 2 .30,

34:36

they do a parade and lots of local you know, businesses and churches and civic organizations and bands.

34:46

I mean, it's a fairly long parade, you know, hour, hour and a half parade every day at about 2 .30.

34:54

And then they have a night parade as well at 8 .30, which is really interesting. You know, you don't see too many night parades.

35:02

You know, so between there they have, I mean, they have food booths and craft booths and you know, all sorts of different things going on.

35:11

They have different speaking programs. They have entertainment, you know, lots of different things.

35:19

Essentially from 9 o 'clock in the morning until midnight for three days in a row.

35:27

You know, the schedule is pretty much the same, right? You'll have different, you know, like music groups or different, you know, acts and stuff.

35:36

But it is a lot of repeating the same thing every day. And, you know,

35:42

Saturday, right? People are off of work. You know, it's always the busiest day. But there are people coming from around the state, around the country, and even around the world.

35:52

You know, in this town, there's probably 50 to 75 buses, you know, tour buses come here, you know, to come see this stuff, right?

36:03

So there's that going on and that's the backdrop, right? We have blocks and blocks of the town kind of sectioned off, you know, and roads closed and all this, you know, stuff to have this all happen, right?

36:21

So what we do is typically people don't come out as much in the morning. It's not as busy.

36:27

So that's when we gather together to, you know, go through the training. We have a couple training sessions in the morning.

36:33

And then from, you know, from there through about seven o 'clock in the evening, then we break up into teams and time slots.

36:42

And, you know, basically, a small team would go out and we'd give each, we'd sign an area of the festival for people to go to and have those conversations, distribute tracks.

36:57

There's times where we have people, hey, this team is going to go over here and they're going to pray. This team is going to go over here and man the booth, you know, different things.

37:06

So we have from about noon till seven, you know, times when we're just out there sharing the gospel, taking what we just learned in the morning and putting that into practice, right?

37:19

You know, no better learning than hands -on, really. So this is for anybody, right?

37:25

Beginners. Yes. Intermediates, advanced, evangelists. We probably have, you know, probably close to, you know, five to 10, sometimes more people who are brand new to this.

37:39

So we target our training, you know, through the week, you know, Thursday, right, is the first day.

37:47

So knowing that people are coming in and they're new to this, we try and focus that training on the first day, you know, to much more of the basics and helping people get started who don't have, you know, experience or don't have as much experience.

38:01

And then we get deeper in it as we go through the week. Yeah, and we do,

38:08

I think one of the things that's important in an event like this, I learned a lot of this from, you know,

38:14

Tony Ramcic, right? So at the end of the day, right, so we gather back together in the evening and we share stories, right?

38:21

What went well? You know, who do we need to pray for? You know, all of these different things, right?

38:27

Sharing that and we learn from others by interacting together and, you know, doing a debrief each evening like that too, so.

38:37

Yeah, that's really neat. So there's a lot of learning that goes on as well in this outreach. So, Brad, what role have you played in this outreach in the past?

38:47

Well, the first couple of years I came, I just came to participate and I heard about the outreach and just a good opportunity to go down and just keep sharing the gospel, you know, and just go to a different event.

39:02

But it was cool that it was in Iowa, so I wanted to go try it and loved it. I mean, the first thing

39:10

I told my wife, because I went down here and I did it. I went to Pella, did the outreach for the day and I drove back home, which is a couple hours away.

39:17

I said, I got to go back tomorrow. That's like the coolest place ever. I go, it's like being in Mayberry.

39:24

And I was looking for Andy Griffith and Barney Five. It was like, it's like the friendliest little town, but with people everywhere.

39:32

So I really like just being in that atmosphere. So I always said, if you're, you know, if you're new at evangelism and street ministry, and this is a great way to just kind of start, you know, to dip your toes in the water, give it a shot.

39:45

And I mean, what a great place to do it. There's people everywhere. You're never going to run out of people to talk to, or at least just hand out tracks, whatever you're comfortable with.

39:54

So it's just a great place to go evangelize. So I kept coming back. So I went for a couple of years, then we had

40:00

COVID and all that nonsense. Sorry, but I did come back again in 21 and 22.

40:07

And in 21, 2021, I came just to participate again, but I got there and Tony Ramczuk was a team leader that day and he had to go run somebody to the airport.

40:17

One of the speakers, it might've been Jason Lyle, I'm not sure, but he had to take someone to the airport and he goes, hey, you want to, or I don't know,

40:25

John, if you asked me if I wanted to lead the team, but I just kind of took over for that day. So I got there and I was still trying to find where my keys were.

40:33

And next thing you know, I'm leading the team and I didn't. So I just kind of jumped right in and did it. So that was pretty fun.

40:39

And then last year, John had me come back and lead a team for a couple of days. So it's a great ministry.

40:45

It's a great outreach. I take time off from work every year now to go do this. And I only get a few days a year to take days off, but I always save one or two for this outreach and it's been worth it.

40:57

So I think it's a great place to go learn how to witness if you've never done it. And if you're like the rest of us who've done a lot of this, it's just a fun outreach, a lot of good fellowship.

41:08

Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, that's the thing that, you know, for folks who may be like, you know, I, I'm not really into evangelism.

41:16

I'm not really sure I could do it. This is, I mean, we used to do events in Jersey and Ohio in California for the, for this very reason, because you're surrounded with a bunch of evangelists who do it regularly, know what they're doing.

41:33

And so this is the, this is an opportunity you get trained and then you go out and you don't have to, if you get stuck,

41:41

I don't know how to answer a question. There's an evangelist there that can help you, right? If you're nervous, just say you woke up,

41:48

Hey, John, it's my first time doing this. I'm really a little bit nervous. Could, could I pair up with you?

41:55

Right? And now you're, you're able to just watch with someone and be able to, to sit there and say, okay, this is,

42:05

I'm seeing how this person's doing it. And then at some point, especially if you're out for many hours, there's a point where the teacher then goes, okay, your turn.

42:11

You know, I would do that often when we would do these type of events with our ministry is take people out and then, okay, we're evangelizing and they watch me for a bit, but then it comes time to,

42:25

I start the conversation and you just hand it off to the person. You'll get it into a spiritual conversation, get it down the, the role of the gospel.

42:33

And then you'll let them take it from there and, and then, you know, slowly build up to where they start the conversation.

42:42

So if you're nervous with it, these type of outreaches are the best to participate in because you have, you have people who can help you.

42:54

You have people who have already been through this. They, they've evangelized regularly.

42:59

And so this becomes a great event to start. If you, if you'd not, if you're not evangelizing.

43:05

Yep. But you've got the same, same atmosphere, right?

43:15

Same type of learning and ambassadors academy and, and other things.

43:21

Right. So Brad talked about, you know, being, being a team lead. Right. So the, over the years,

43:27

I mean, the first year I did this, I thought I might be the only one and we, we had maybe 10 people show up.

43:34

Right. Never more than maybe five at a time. But it was, it was, it was kind of small, but it, you know,

43:40

God's been blessing it over the years. It's been growing. It kind of goes up and down depending on different things.

43:46

Right. But one year we actually had the, the

43:51

Bible teacher for the local Christian school reached out to me and said,

43:57

Hey, you know, let me know what's going on here. So he actually got permission to take his class out of school that day and go do this with us.

44:08

Brought 20 students with him. Wow. So that year we had 80 people out on the streets, sharing the gospel.

44:17

Right. But right. It's, it's because of that size. I said, I can't do this all by myself.

44:23

Right. So we, we, we said, Hey, you know, this makes sense to, to go out and follow the pattern.

44:30

We, we had an ambassador's academy and break up into teams, assign teams, different areas and, and things like that.

44:36

Because the other thing we ran into was so many people even though there's 200 ,000 people out there is we'd end up walking right behind each other.

44:45

Right. So I'd be walking along, giving out tracks and, you know, Brad's a half a block behind me and everybody's saying, no,

44:53

I already got one. Right. So we said, ah, let's, let's break this up and manage this.

44:59

You know, a little bit better, but yeah, it's, it's incredible the way you can learn because a lot of people are comfortable.

45:06

Once you get into the right topic, they can just slide right in, but they're not as comfortable.

45:12

Like, like you said, Andrew, I'm starting that right until they've seen it done a few times.

45:17

But see that we found out this when we first started doing this, what we call

45:23

Jersey fire and then equip Jersey was the fact that when you do this and you'd, we used to have, because we would do open air preaching as well.

45:33

And we'd have preaching stations set up. We'd have people handing out tracks. And after someone's handed a bunch of tracks, the interesting thing is after they get offered like five, six, seven different times offered a track, you go to give them a track.

45:48

And even though they've, they've been offered them a bunch of times, they start to go. So what's this about?

45:54

You know, or if you want to share in the gospel, all you have to do is say, you know, so someone ends up asking you, you know, they, oh,

46:02

I already got one. Did you read it? And that's an easy way to start the gospel then. And so people would think, oh, this is not good.

46:10

If you have a lot of people out there evangelizing and actually it makes it easier, especially for the person who might be nervous, you know?

46:19

Yeah. And if you're nervous, get used to it.

46:27

I still get nervous almost every time. So I know that part of the first conversation is really the hardest.

46:35

Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, that's, you know, when I do the evangelism trainings that we do,

46:40

I ask people, who's the hardest person to talk to? Oh, family, co -workers, friends.

46:46

I always go that first person that you spoke to today. Because the first person is the hardest.

46:52

The next one gets easier and they continue to get easier. And, but that first person, you know, that's, that's hard.

47:01

Yeah, yeah. And even Ray Comfort has told us that, Andrews, we've gone out to evangelize with him that the first one is the hardest.

47:07

And even he is nervous every Saturday before he goes out to evangelize. Yeah, when we go out there, you know, and we go to, you know, usually what we do is before Shepherds Conference, Anthony and I would go out early.

47:21

Because I like to, I enjoy doing the open air with Ray, but I don't enjoy doing it afterwards when all the people from Shepherds Conference are watching.

47:29

But, you know, we would do that. And, you know, we drive down with Ray, I'll pick him up at his house and we drive down there and he'll tell us, he's like, you know, as we get there,

47:39

I remember one time it was raining and he was like, oh, if you guys didn't text me today,

47:45

I, you know, I would have like been up for not going out. You know, it was, it was a dreary day.

47:51

And people think like, well, Ray's always going out. He does, but he had to get himself motivated to go out.

47:57

You know, Scotty couldn't go with him that time. And so the fact that Anthony and I were in town and wanted to go out, he was like, oh, if you guys didn't call,

48:07

I wouldn't have gone. You know, so, yeah. So we did have, so.

48:14

Hey, can I make a comment on one of the comments here that I'm seeing? Yeah. Which one? I'll put it up. Melissa Owens.

48:23

Okay. It's at 742, it looks like. This one?

48:29

Yeah. Yeah. So, yep. Perfect. So Melissa Owens says, you guys need to come to Holland, Michigan for our tulip festival.

48:37

And, and Melissa, I don't know if you know the history with Holland, Michigan, but it's largely the same group that came out of Holland.

48:45

Some, or yeah, some settled in Michigan, some settled in Iowa, right? There's, those are kind of the two key places.

48:53

But the interesting thing is, I tie into this personally as well, is they have a tulip festival.

48:59

They call it Tulip Time. And Pella is actually Pella Tulip Time Festival.

49:05

But when I started my ministry, I called it Tulip Time Outreach. But then they sent me a nice little non -threatening email saying, hey, we have a registered trademark on Tulip Time, basically cease and desist.

49:24

So that's where I came up with Tulip Gospel Outreach. I said, you know, it's simple, not much of a change.

49:32

It says even more what we do and that I don't get myself in trouble. But there is a lot of, if you haven't seen the history on Holland, Michigan, you know, go out there and do some research on it because that would be perfect.

49:47

Melissa, if you start that there, we'll find a way to come up there sometime. Yeah, or they get in touch with you and, not that one, but here

49:57

I put that one. Ed Romaine says, Andrew should be a speaker teacher. But where's the one

50:02

I wanted from Ed? Well, no, it was this one. Sorry, they're moving to where? I think

50:08

Eddie Roman went to this outreach and that is true. Eddie had been here, had gone there.

50:16

So, and this is from our friend Donny as well. He says, Andrew is so thankful for the

50:21

Ohio event because he met me there. Yes, Donny, that was the highlight.

50:27

Just getting to meet you. Hey, you met me there too, Donny. Yeah. So, Eddie was out here filming a few years ago, right?

50:37

So, if you have access to The Way of the Master episodes, season eight,

50:43

I believe it's episode eight, you know, is where he's got the film of this outreach.

50:49

So, I think I have a link I might be able to share too.

50:55

If I find it, I'll stick it in the chat for you, Andrew, to put up there. So, we had another one come up from Tim's.

51:02

Eddie and his crew came. So, how many evangelists gather regularly with y 'all?

51:11

You mean like regularly at Tulip Time? I'm guessing Tulip Time. Yeah. So, I would say

51:18

Tulip Time typically on a given day, we're anywhere from 30 to 50, which is a pretty big crowd, right?

51:28

But then, yeah, just like Jesus sent out the disciples in pairs, we try and get into small groups so it's not imposing, you know.

51:36

Can you imagine an atheist or a Catholic or, you know, someone else, you know, having a group of, you know, 10 people walk up to them?

51:44

That's a little intimidating, right? Not necessarily encouraging a conversation, but yeah.

51:53

So, we break into small groups to do that. But yeah, I would say outside of Tulip Time, well, so like the

52:02

Iowa State Fair outreach that we participate in, there's probably over 100 people, you know, evangelists, you know, there every year.

52:11

There's 1 .2 million people coming through the Iowa State Fair during that time frame, too. But our 10 -city tour, you know, we'll have a half a dozen people at each of those cities and, you know, so on.

52:27

So, that's a little bit more typical than the bigger events like Tulip Time and Iowa State Fair.

52:34

But good question. So, before we go any further, I want to add one more to our stream.

52:41

And it is good old Steven Johnson. Oh, you woke me up.

52:48

Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up. Getting close to my bedtime, you know. I wanted to get you in here.

52:53

If it is your bedtime, I mean, it might be good that we talk about the fact if you're, you know, needing to fall asleep like Cole here, then what you really need is a good

53:09

MyPillow. And if you get yourself a good MyPillow, like this is what Cole here needed during one of our shows backstage.

53:17

He was, as you can see, very much out like a light. But Cole needed his

53:23

MyPillow. He just didn't have his promo code SFE to get his discount. So, he just had to use that little

53:29

U -shaped thing there that he's got. But if you want to get yourself a good night's sleep there, Steven, go to MyPillow .com

53:37

and use our promo code SFE or you can call 1 -800 -873 -0176 to make sure you get yourself a good night of sleep.

53:50

So, that's something you could do. I already got one. Well, but do you have the

53:57

MyPillow 2 .0? Oh, 2 .0. Yes. You know, you put a pillowcase over it.

54:04

So, what difference does it make? But whatever. Actually, no. So, the MyPillow 2 .0 is to help with folks who tend to sweat at night.

54:15

So, which is me versus my wife. So, what ends up happening is

54:21

I tend to sweat a bit. And so, the MyPillow 2 .0

54:26

and I got the MyPillow 2 .0 mattress topper, the new one. And so, that actually has helped.

54:33

Now, granted, I did over test it. I wanted to, you know, it was working well. So, one night I put on lots of layers to see and yeah, well, okay.

54:42

Do that and you're still going to sweat. But it has helped and I still get a great night of sleep.

54:49

It's been helping more. So, if you have the original one, then maybe, you know, 2 .0

54:54

would be good for you. All right. I'll keep that in mind. So, we lost

55:00

Anthony. I know there was Travis was backstage. I didn't know what question he had.

55:06

We try to take on the top of the hour. We try to bring people in who are backstage. And so,

55:14

Anthony had asked him if he had a question, but he didn't have one. So, Stephen, are you involved with Tulip Time or do you have questions for us tonight?

55:25

Well, I've gone, you know, for like a day the last couple of years that I could. And last year,

55:33

I got, well, I got a volunteer to fill in for somebody to leave the crew.

55:40

And it was awesome. It was great. You know, we've been out on the streets for 20 some years.

55:47

So, you know, hopefully, I've made enough mistakes that I can, you know,

55:52

I can help people so they don't have to make the same ones over again. But, you know, it was great.

55:59

And like my wife's going this year and, you know, I got a little story about last year.

56:04

You know, one of our team members, of course, we all kind of met together and we talked and all this and that. And I told him what we do with, you know, we're with open air campaigners.

56:13

We do those sketchboards, you know. And it's really great for some venues. And she was so excited about that, that she ended up coming to our house a couple months later and we hosted her for a week.

56:25

And we took her through a whole training to learn how to paint some sketchboards. So, it was pretty, it was pretty cool.

56:33

Yeah. So, assume that was Pam, right? Pam knew some, yeah. So, John, we got this one from Melissa.

56:41

She said, John, you're always welcome here. I got to drag you and you and Anthony both along.

56:50

Yeah, we can do that. That's what she's saying. Okay. And Donnie is telling me that back with the being hot at night, he says, change your diet,

57:00

Andrew. I keep telling you that. My diet's working fine, Donnie. I've lost what,

57:06

I think I'm going on 17 pounds since last month, since getting back from Shepherd Conference.

57:12

So, I think my diet's working just fine. I don't think

57:18

Donnie's losing that much weight, but that's okay. You're looking great, bud. Yeah. So, the secret's actually getting in a sauna on a regular basis.

57:30

Too much information. Well, and a clean keto diet is a big help.

57:37

Well, a good diet, running. Yeah, no, actually, crazy statistic, but regular use of a sauna reduces your chance of cardiovascular disease, heart attack,

57:52

Alzheimer's, and depression by over 60%. Dude, that's why you sweat at night. It's because you sit in those saunas all day long.

57:58

Actually, no, I started that after I got the 2 .0. All right, whatever.

58:04

How do you go from evangelism to saunas? I have no idea. It's Donnie's pillows.

58:11

So, Stephen, do you have any questions for us tonight? Questions?

58:18

You know who Stephen is, right? Well, I don't know that he was, is he involved with Tool of Time?

58:24

It did sound like it. Well, Steve is who trained Robert Gray in evangelism way back in the day. Really?

58:31

That's what I heard anyway. You did now. Oh, yeah, I'm famous. So, he's famous for that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're the guy, whatever.

58:40

Robert Gray is probably, in my opinion, my humble opinion, is probably one of the best open -air evangelists.

58:47

And I'll tell you why. You know, if any of you watching or listening, if you've seen open -air evangelism, you've probably seen guys who are doing it bad.

58:58

That's usually what you see, is you see guys who are yelling at people, they act arrogantly, they're coming down hard on people, and they're trying to be the

59:09

Holy Spirit, is really what it is. They want to be the ones to convict the person of sin.

59:16

And sometimes I think they think that they're going to be the ones that are going to, you know, regenerate the person.

59:23

But the thing is, you've seen a lot of that. But when Robert Gray preaches, and here's

59:29

Donnie saying, you know, Robert is awesome. When he preaches the gospel, the thing that I love about it is he lifts

59:37

Christ up so high. Um, he has just, he has such a love for Christ that his preaching is something where I, maybe this is a fault on my part, but I stop evangelizing.

59:53

I stop handing out gospel tracts. Because when I listen to him preach the gospel, he lifts

01:00:00

Christ up so high that I just want to listen, because I walk away feeling

01:00:06

I just was, I just worshiped. You hear him preach, and you end up feeling in awe of who

01:00:15

God is. And Ed Romine is saying, Amen, I love Robert. So.

01:00:22

Oh, yeah, I got a lot of stories when Robert and I started going out together. So, you know,

01:00:27

I talk about teaching the teacher. It was, it was pretty cool.

01:00:34

I see someone, Tim is trying to come in. Oh, there we go. He is in. So we do have someone backstage.

01:00:41

So, Tim, just let us know if you got, if you have questions, make sure your audio is working. You know,

01:00:46

Robert, Robert's the one that introduced me and Steve years ago. It was in 2015.

01:00:52

I got a, because I'd preached with Robert a couple of different places, just got done with the

01:00:57

Super Bowl outreach in Phoenix. And Robert was on my team, and I had met him before at an academy.

01:01:03

But Robert, I think it was 2015, late 2014, he sent me a message and said, Hey, I got this buddy named

01:01:09

Steve Johnson. He just moved into your area. He goes, and he kind of gave me his, Steve's contact information.

01:01:16

And, and ever since, me and Steve have been kind of working together when we can for about eight years now.

01:01:24

So, yeah, Robert's a great brother. He, he, he doesn't hold back, but he does it in an awesome way.

01:01:32

He's not like the street preachers and all that. We lived in Colorado for 15 years.

01:01:39

That's where I met Robert. And, and we had to move back here to Iowa because we had eight grandkids.

01:01:46

So, now that I got them back here, you know, I've been trying to kind of, you know, meet

01:01:52

Brad and a few other people and try to get reconnected, you know, trying to get a normal network going. So, so yeah, it's been good.

01:02:05

Well, Anthony is trying to speak, but he muted himself. I muted myself. Yeah, there we go. There's my technology issues.

01:02:12

You knew they were going to come out at some point tonight. So, so this is an open Q and A. So anyone who wants to ask questions, please, please do.

01:02:21

I did see a comment earlier from Carol, who's from our area in Cleveland here. I went to a good friend of ours.

01:02:27

I went to a women's conference at the ARC this last weekend. So my wife was there as well. The women's answers conference at the

01:02:35

ARC encounter in Kentucky, part of Answers in Genesis. Hold on. You made it sound like you're reading her question, and then you interjected your own personal thing.

01:02:44

And people are confused for Carol having a wife. Okay. Why don't you try reading this one again for those who are listening and not reading along with you, because that sounded really wrong.

01:02:56

That did sound really wrong. No, no. Carol's married to a husband. All right. So Carol says.

01:03:02

Yeah, Carol's husband is not going to be happy with you, and he lives near you. Just saying. I went to a women's conference at the

01:03:08

ARC this last week. The idea of just engaging in conversations training would have been a great help, even at a

01:03:14

Christian women's event. And you know what? I think you're preaching to the choir.

01:03:19

And so maybe some of you guys want to handle this, John, Brad, or Steven. Why is it that evangelism seems to not be a topic of most of the conferences out there, even really good conferences?

01:03:35

You're not going to get a very big conference if you're only talking about evangelism. Yeah. The only way to get a smaller conference is do it on prayer.

01:03:44

Yeah. Well, my wife is going to our church here. They're doing a women's retreat.

01:03:56

And I forgot where it's at. Might be in Iowa City. And last year they asked her, because they know who we are, if they could go out and they could go hand out tracts and she could help them.

01:04:08

So she took out a group of five, ten, I don't know how many women it was. And that's what they did over lunch.

01:04:16

So it's a start. And I guess she's going to, if there's a bunch of people asking her to do it again, that's coming up here in a couple of weeks.

01:04:23

You know, we know folks who go, you know, at some of the bigger conferences, you know, we've tried, we've organized things.

01:04:30

I know like at Shepard's conference, there's guys that go in the first thing in the morning. But some of those conferences aren't, it's hard because they book up so much at a time.

01:04:40

In answer to the question, Donnie mentions this. So this might be a good resource.

01:04:45

The book Tactics is very helpful when talking to anyone. Tactics is by Greg Kokel.

01:04:51

And so that's a really good book on just learning how to have conversations. That was a next question, man.

01:04:59

But, you know, it's really good on learning how to navigate conversations, really learning how to ask questions.

01:05:05

That's going to help you. So yes, that's pretty good. Well, tracts are the easiest.

01:05:12

Tracts are so easy. Anyone could go out over lunch and take some people and just hand out some tracts and try to get in the conversations.

01:05:20

Just that's the starting point as far as I'm concerned. So you can even hand out tracts at a, you know,

01:05:29

Kenneth Copeland conference, because we did that. Justin and I, Justin dragged me to a

01:05:35

Kenneth Copeland conference. And we went. And so we go there and, you know,

01:05:46

I'm handing out tracts. Well, there was one of the guys that was speaking. And, you know, or actually it was a friend of his that was up there.

01:05:55

And he's walking around in the hall. So I handed him a gospel tract. Everyone else was taking them.

01:06:01

And they were like, what's this? This guy knew what it was. And he turns to me, he goes, you trying to evangelize me?

01:06:08

And I said, in your case, definitely. The tracts are very useful.

01:06:20

I'm sorry. At the TULIP Festival, you can get into so many conversations.

01:06:27

Just give them a tract, say, what is it? It's got a Christian message on it. And off you go.

01:06:32

I mean, it's just so easy. Tracts do make things very, very easy.

01:06:41

Right. Doing it without a tract. So we had an issue last year where we were training people.

01:06:51

And this was at the Iowa State Fair. And normally we'd send people out doing this for the first time.

01:06:57

I said, hey, hand out these tracts. But for some reason, we were instructed this time, no, don't use the tracts.

01:07:05

Or only use the tracts after you've had the conversation with them. That becomes a little bit harder.

01:07:11

But if you've had some experience, it's not that hard.

01:07:17

But tracts are great. I mean, they're training wheels. And they can help structure the conversation.

01:07:22

So when people get off track, you can take them back to the tract. So let's talk about some things with tracts.

01:07:30

Because like you're saying, they're good. Let me start with some things that could go wrong with handing out tracts.

01:07:37

And then we'll end with how they're beneficial. So you make tracts specific for your event.

01:07:43

And be careful when you do it. So we used to evangelize on the boardwalk where they filmed

01:07:50

Jersey Shore every year. And so we thought we would do different tracts for the

01:07:56

Jersey Shore all the time for that area. We create the tracts for the event. One year, we made a tract called

01:08:03

Casting Call. And it was a big mistake.

01:08:08

Because what we could not have planned for was they announced they're canceling

01:08:14

Jersey Shore that week we went out. And so we have tracts that say

01:08:19

Casting Call. Now, nobody is reading the tract on the back.

01:08:25

That's what we discovered. And we discovered it because we had hundreds of people.

01:08:32

And the biggest reason I regretted that was I was getting hundreds of emails about how wicked people are.

01:08:40

Because they're like trying to promote how sinful they are to get on a show. Like, did you read the back?

01:08:46

Like the back talks about a casting call when you stand before God. Right? So we tried to make this transition.

01:08:52

Now, we couldn't have planned that they canceled it. Like, we didn't know that would happen.

01:08:59

But I will say if you create your own tracts, you have to think through how people are going to think about it.

01:09:05

Because there is a negative that could happen in that case. I never even thought about the fact that people would not read.

01:09:13

They just see Casting Call and think, I'm going to get on the show. And so that became a mistake.

01:09:21

And now granted, we couldn't use those tracts much after that. And really only at that event.

01:09:27

There's not like people could take them home and use them so much. I mean, they still could.

01:09:33

But then there's another thing, Stephen, you said, I know, and this is going to be a question for you guys.

01:09:39

When handing out a gospel tract and someone says, what is it? I know some people that don't want to say that, like you said, you know, where you're saying it's a gospel tract or it's something about God.

01:09:55

Some people say a Christian message. You say a Christian message. There's people who don't want to say anything.

01:10:02

It's like, here, just read it. When I'm asked, I just say it has a very important message about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:10:11

So I come straight out because I want to transition from that to a conversation. Right. So when you have people that they hand out a tract, but they don't, they just want to hand out the tract and run, right?

01:10:26

Is it okay to say, you give a million dollar bill and just say, hey, you look like a million and they say, what is it?

01:10:32

And go, oh, it's just, it's a fake million dollar bill. In your ideas, guys, is it okay to do that?

01:10:39

Is it okay to, or should we be more specific like Stephen said? I think it'd be great.

01:10:46

They'll take it. They'll take it home and read it. God will use it. But I, you know, I think if you say it's a

01:10:52

Christian message, it can get you into a conversation a little easier than just saying, well, you know, and if you're prepared to sit down and talk to them, look, if they're not interested, they're not going to bring anything up.

01:11:04

But you'd be surprised about the amount of people that would say, oh, what do you mean a Christian message? And off you go.

01:11:11

You know, I just rather just tell them. And go from there.

01:11:16

But I mean, I don't think there's any really wrong way to do it, in my opinion. So, yeah,

01:11:22

I don't like to, right. I mean, when I first started doing it, I had a little fear.

01:11:28

It's like, you know, and you're just trying to be low key. But anymore, it's no,

01:11:34

I mean, I'm not hiding. It's a Christian message, right? It's, it's the gospel. It's right.

01:11:40

A friend of mine that was out with us this past weekend says, hey, here's something fun with a good message on the back.

01:11:47

Right there. Right. And then if people ask, then he says, well, it's, it's, it's the gospel. And right, you know, step up and through it.

01:11:55

So now let me ask you this. What do you guys think about there's some people that criticize, you know,

01:12:00

I mentioned the million dollar bill. Some people criticize the giving either.

01:12:07

I mean, there is no such thing as a million dollar bill. But it's for the humor value, things like that.

01:12:13

They're easy to give out. But a lot of people don't like that. They think it's trickery. Some don't like the curved illusions, things like that, because they think it's gimmicks.

01:12:25

And you're making a gimmick from the gospel. Do you have an issue? Do you see problems with handing out tracts that are, you know, to make people laugh, to start a conversation or money based or things like that?

01:12:38

You know, putting a dropping a fake wallet on the ground. What do you guys think of those things? Well, I actually had someone bring that up.

01:12:48

Go ahead, Brad. I was just going to say when I first started, I used money tracks a lot.

01:12:56

But I did notice I was, I got, I haven't used money tracks in a long time. I have just pretty straightforward tracks that I use called

01:13:04

Innocent or Guilty. I believe they're from Track Planet. I like those the best because what's bigger is they don't get stuck on my hand when

01:13:10

I'm trying to hand them out real fast. But anyway, back to the, back to the money tracts.

01:13:16

I did get away from the ones that were, didn't have any extra color in them because I had enough people think that I was trying to trick them with money.

01:13:26

And obviously I wasn't. And I still was able to get in really good conversations with them. But I did, I, when

01:13:32

I did use my money tracts back then, I would trick, I would switch to ones that had like a picture of some athlete on the front or, you know, just so that way they knew

01:13:40

I wasn't, you know, handing out, they didn't think I was trying to hand out money. So I don't have a problem with them.

01:13:46

I just, I got tired of saying, no, it's not real money. And, you know, so I switched it up that way. Yeah, that was my experience with them.

01:13:54

Yeah, but they are super easy to give out. And if you're going out with people that are scared to death, they're newbies,

01:14:00

I mean, you name it. Uh, you know, we, that's what we start with and just say, you know, another, another advantage that Steven is we did this in New York where we had a hard time handing out tracts.

01:14:12

And we had the old living waters tracts that didn't really have too much of a message. It was like on the corner, you know, like all around the edge, really, really, really small print.

01:14:23

So we had a bunch of them. We didn't like those, but we had a guy walking 20 feet in front of us.

01:14:28

He called it priming the pump. He would hand out the million dollar bill because we couldn't get anyone to hand out tracts.

01:14:35

So he goes, he goes, I'm going to walk in front of him, prime the pump. He would just get people. He'd be like, Hey, you get your million, you get your million.

01:14:42

And they're now when they, anyone that took his million dollar bill, we walked behind 20 feet later and said, did you get one of these?

01:14:49

And it actually worked that they would, it did kind of prime the pump that they were more, they're ready to take the gospel track that we handed them.

01:14:59

You know, like the farmer's markets that I go to and where there's more young, when there's some younger people around different events or concerts or whatever, the money tracks that I, those would go so fast, especially the ones that for me that I use that had some color in them.

01:15:14

They went so fast that you couldn't get out. I couldn't keep enough of them on me.

01:15:20

So depending on the event, if there's a younger crowd, especially those tracks go really fast.

01:15:26

The liquid water is one that I used to use. I have had people that I have met out on the street and I've tried to give a track, a money track to them.

01:15:37

And they will pull, they will say, you know what? You were here last year and you gave me this money, whatever it was.

01:15:44

They don't even know what to call it. And I still keep it with me. And it's, you know, it's a money track and they keep it in their wallet.

01:15:52

And they said, I look at this all the time. I've had that a few times. I like them.

01:15:58

I used to have a $0 bill. And, and so I used to, I used to joke with people when

01:16:04

I had that one. I said, Hey, here's a $0 bill. Always keep it in your wallet. So if anyone asks you,

01:16:09

I have money. You could say, I have a $0 in my wallet and they'd laugh. But people would do that.

01:16:17

Ed Romine says this though, I want to see what you guys think about this. And then John, I know you were saying something.

01:16:22

He said, don't hand money tracks out at restaurants to waiters and waitresses.

01:16:28

What do you guys think about that? Well, that becomes the problem, right?

01:16:46

If you leave a money track with a bad tip, leave a money track.

01:16:54

That's a great, that's a great way to survive. Yeah. I mean, and, and be careful. Like, I remember

01:17:00

Ray Comfort used to have this little track that it looked like it was a hundred dollar bill slipped in a, in a envelope.

01:17:06

And I accidentally left that at a restaurant. And I took my son and I went out for breakfast and the waitress thought that it was like his graduation present.

01:17:14

And he left it there. And she ran into the, ran out to us, to the car to give it back to us.

01:17:21

We're like, no, that's a gospel track for you. So that's when I realized that maybe I should stop doing that. But so John, you were saying something with the tracks.

01:17:29

So you want to say something about tracks earlier? Yeah, no, I actually had someone, you know, bring this up to me, you know, here recently as well, right?

01:17:38

Today, you know, a lot of these million dollar bills and, you know, they're, they're, they're gimmicks, they're pragmatic and things like that.

01:17:46

But when I look at it, right, sure, there's, there's people who can use the right, use tracks incorrectly and use them in those ways.

01:17:57

But really, when I look at a track, I'm looking at the message. I'm looking at what it, right?

01:18:02

What is, what is on it, right? I stuck a link back in the, in the, in the chat room. I actually wrote a blog article on questions to ask.

01:18:11

I'm going to include that in the podcast version in the show notes. So that, that, that links to, let me just tell folks what it is.

01:18:19

It links to an article you have on nine questions when choosing a good track. So that'll be in the show notes.

01:18:30

So, so, you know, one of the other things I know that I've done wrong in creating tracks when, again, this was down at Jersey Shore and, and you can go to trackplanet .com

01:18:41

and get these tracks. It's a great track that we wrote. And it's, it, the thing is it has a girl on the front, like looking like she's pondering something.

01:18:53

You say, well, what's the problem with that track? Well, I'll tell you what the problem was that track where we gave it out is that there's a lot of strip places.

01:19:02

And so what you constantly have down there is people who are handing cards out to invite people to the strip joints later that night.

01:19:12

And so they walk up and down to try to invite me.

01:19:20

So, so even though innocently, we, you know, we just have this girl pondering a thought it actually in that area and in New York and different places like that, we realized it's a bit like, that's a bad track to hand out in Times Square for the same exact reason.

01:19:36

Okay. It's a, it's a well -written track and it is, it's good. But the problem is sometimes you can have a track that in some areas, maybe not the best to use for that area.

01:19:49

And so those are some of the mistakes I've made. Melissa says,

01:19:55

I give out the good person test comic. Now. So this is one of two that I almost always carry with me from living waters is they have a, and this is now transitioned into some good things about tracks.

01:20:08

They have two tracks that I carry with me, the good person test and the comic. The comic is good to give to anybody, but especially if you, if you come to younger, you know, teenagers and younger, it's, it's a comic style, good person test.

01:20:23

The other one's a little one inch by one inch booklet. That's a good person test.

01:20:28

And the reason that is so good is, and this is something to consider when you have gospel tracks, the larger, the tract, the more likely it's being thrown in the trash.

01:20:39

If it can fit in their pocket, it just seems it's more likely that's where it goes.

01:20:45

They shove it in their pocket and they may throw it out at home or they take it out and throw it on the dresser. You know,

01:20:51

I know one person that threw it in the draw for a year and then came to church after a year of handing out the track and it had just been sitting there.

01:21:00

And so if you're going to give, like, you know, I know living orders makes that big $100 bill.

01:21:07

That's like, I don't know. It's what, like two foot big.

01:21:12

But that's a novelty. And, and you hand those out the big money, everyone comes up and grabs one for the novelty.

01:21:20

So that's going to be different. So if it's a novelty thing, that's good. But also, you know, with that,

01:21:27

I'll just say, if you get the business side gospel tracks, the other small, but when you make the font too small and people can't read it, they're not going to try.

01:21:36

Right. So you have to keep that in mind is for many people, if the font's too small, and if you're younger, think about the fact that you're handing tracks to older people.

01:21:46

So you got to be can say, okay, maybe this tract is for younger people. This is for older people. You could do things like that, but just be aware of the tracks you use.

01:21:55

But I have found that a smaller tract, and that's why I love that small one inch by one inch booklet, because it's an easy read, they can get through it.

01:22:04

And, you know, they're going to stick it in their pocket and take it with them. So, guys, what are some other advantages to tracks?

01:22:12

Well, when I was at a church in Colorado, you know, Colorado Springs has the second largest hot air balloon festival in the

01:22:19

United States. Didn't know that. And our church, well, I made these three by five, like, postcards and had a picture of, you know, hot air balloons with the mountains in the background.

01:22:35

And then I think I put, are you ready? Or I don't know what it was. And then on the back, you know,

01:22:41

I had a nice little gospel message and some church information, but that card, you know, it was glossy.

01:22:49

It was, you know, it was like a souvenir. So, I think tons of,

01:22:55

I mean, hundreds and thousands of those went out because people, I think, probably kept them because they were like a little souvenir from the balloon festival.

01:23:03

And I had the gospel on the back of it. It was, you know, I thought it went really well. You know,

01:23:09

I like, one thing I like about the tracks, and you guys have all heard this, but the tracks go places that we can't go. You know, you hand it to a person and, you know, like you guys have said, they'll shove it in their pocket, read it later, but they'll get into their home and they'll read that gospel by themselves.

01:23:23

And they can't argue with it. It's not going to talk back to them. So, they're going to, you know, it goes maybe to their bedroom and they'll read it at night.

01:23:29

But I remember specifically a story years ago, I was on campus at the University of Iowa, and I don't know if I was,

01:23:36

I don't know if it was the Good Person tracks that I, I hand those out from Living Waters all the time. I love those, the

01:23:42

Good Person tracks. But I don't know if it was that or another one, but I was handing tracks out one day to a bunch of guys, and I felt like there were, you know, a lot of times people say, yeah,

01:23:52

I already got one. And you know, they didn't. They just don't want one and they're lying to you. And I, you know, I get a little honor on campus because I've been there and they know me.

01:23:59

And I'll say, no, you didn't. You didn't get one yet. And I go, you just lied. And I'll say it with a smile.

01:24:05

And I'm just joking with them. And they know that. And they'll go, no. Oh, there's the other part, like a fire. It was, right. He goes, no, you really, we already got that one.

01:24:15

I go, I just got here. I haven't seen you guys today. Did I give it to you last week or something? He goes, no, we've had that tracked on our coffee table in my dorm for about a year.

01:24:24

And I had apparently given it to him a year before. And he said, we've never, we've always leave it there. We read it sometimes.

01:24:30

Who knows what they're doing in that dorm, but they left that track on their coffee table. You know,

01:24:36

I had a woman out when we were out evangelizing. I gave her a gospel track, but she didn't speak

01:24:41

English. And she had her daughter translate it to her.

01:24:48

So, you know, that's something where, you know, and she ended up, like, it was really weird. It was like an eight -year -old girl.

01:24:54

And I'm sharing the gospel to the mother through the girl. And the mother actually prayed to receive

01:25:01

Christ. And so, you know, who knows? But, you know, it just, the daughter was hearing the gospel as well.

01:25:09

You're saying the gospel. So while we're speaking about needing translators for speaking in tongues,

01:25:15

Andrew, we were wondering when you said in the draw, what were you speaking?

01:25:23

There's a whole bunch of comments about that. So what is that? These things like this, you know.

01:25:29

Oh, so let me be the translator. Yeah, Donnie said, you know, did he speak

01:25:36

Jersey? You know, I can't help it if some of you folks in the Midwest don't know how to speak.

01:25:41

But Frank said this, and this is a good note. The only money tracks I got in trouble with was when

01:25:48

I took four stacks with me to Hordana, I can't say it.

01:25:54

Honduras. Honduras, and got stopped by customs. And that is a thing with money tracks, is

01:26:01

I do not encourage people to use money tracks overseas. Because people don't know,

01:26:09

I mean, if you go to certain places, you know, they may have a million, whatever, million pesos bill.

01:26:17

And so they don't know there's not a million dollar bill. And they think it's real.

01:26:22

They don't know they can't spend it. They don't look at it. And, you know, especially depending on some of those countries where they think, oh, all

01:26:29

Americans are rich. They think you can afford to give out millions of dollars because, you know, that's some of the thinking.

01:26:37

So we got a couple of questions that did come in, you know, within the last half hour.

01:26:43

So let me just get to some of them. One specific to the event that you're doing.

01:26:50

Tim R is asking, can we bring our own tracks to pass out if we come to Tulip Fest?

01:26:57

Yeah, I think, right, we've had people bring in their own tracks as well, right?

01:27:03

We try to provide, and I've got a stack of 25 to 30 ,000 tracks sitting in my basement here right now ready so people don't have to.

01:27:12

But if you have your own and you want to use your own, that's fine. I've got no issues with that.

01:27:20

Melissa Owens asked this. She says, when you guys do evangelism, have you ever had problems with city officials or people trying to silence you?

01:27:29

I know that some places are strict about sound amplification. So I think we probably all will have something with this.

01:27:38

John, let's start with you. We'll go to Steven, then Brad, and then

01:27:43

Anthony and I. Yeah, and I think the last part of that with the sound amplification,

01:27:50

I run into that, you know, various different places. But at Tulip Time, we don't do the open air, so we don't run into that issue.

01:28:01

Now, we have had other problems with the city officials. I kind of hinted at that earlier, but they, you know, the second year we went out and did this, they were trying to stop us.

01:28:12

We did get lawyers and other things involved and, you know, did get a letter from the city attorney saying they would not infringe upon our rights.

01:28:22

So I, in that whole process, had, I don't know, over the course of two months,

01:28:29

I had 15 to 20 different conversations with the police, with the attorneys, right?

01:28:35

Just saying, hey, trying to resolve this. I don't want this to become a conflict, right? Trying to clear the way so that when people come to do this, we don't have problems, right?

01:28:46

We ended up actually, person's probably been on this show before, you know,

01:28:52

Chris, actually was the one who took the brunt of that. Because that year, right, we went out the first time and somebody, you know, tried to stop them from doing it.

01:29:03

They ended up calling the police over and, right, because I had had a dozen conversations with the police already, you know, they came in, they said, hey, what are you guys doing?

01:29:13

What are you handing out? He gave them one of the tracks. He took like a two -second look at it and said, yep, they're okay, and went on, and that was it, right?

01:29:21

So in an event like this, when we have lots of people, it's important to know and pave the way, you know, ahead of time.

01:29:30

But, yeah, there's times, right, just know where the public places are, what the rules are around sound amplification or signs or things like that, right?

01:29:41

Because sometimes there's noise ordinances that are not related to amplification, right?

01:29:47

So in Pella, there's something around a certain number of decibels at a certain distance, and they'll, right, if someone complains, they'll help you and say, okay, you know, they'll have their decibel meter or whatever and say, okay, that's loud enough, don't go any higher than that.

01:30:01

But, you know, usually find the police fairly helpful on those things. Steven?

01:30:10

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, if you're out there on the streets, you should probably, if you could beforehand, find out what the ordinances are.

01:30:20

You know, you go from one city and it's fine, you go to the next city right next door and they outlaw it. So, you know, you can do that pretty easily usually, and that's what

01:30:32

I try to do. I mean, you try to work within the guidelines the best you can. But, you know,

01:30:37

I'd rather not use amplification if I can get away with it. I think it's, to me,

01:30:47

I like to interact with people more, even when I'm open air preaching, it's more of a, you know, what do you think about this and try to get people involved a little bit.

01:30:56

Some guys just like to preach, that's fine, but I actually try to interact. And I think if you're using a microphone,

01:31:03

I think it's sometimes it's a little harder, it's more impersonal. That's my own opinion on that.

01:31:11

Brad? I have used an amp on and off over the years.

01:31:17

I haven't as much the last couple of years. Obviously, it does help get your voice louder and everything.

01:31:24

And it does help in some ways, because then you can just talk without having to raise your voice. It just sounds like you're talking rather than, you know, not shouting, but you guys know what

01:31:33

I mean. But I have been, someone has tried to shut me down a couple times.

01:31:39

One year I was preaching on campus at U of I, and there was like two squad cars that came flying up, like I just robbed a bank, and they pulled up right in front of me, they charged right up.

01:31:50

And I'd been doing it there for six years, and they never said a word. But all of a sudden, it was a problem that day, someone had called the police.

01:31:56

And so I respected them, and I put it down. And so it just depends. I haven't, like I said,

01:32:02

I haven't used it as much. Like Steve, I do like to interact. I'm trying to get better at that.

01:32:07

I got into the thing for a few years where I was just preaching, and I actually got uncomfortable talking to people.

01:32:13

And that was a bad place to be in. I'm like, okay, I need to take this thing off and step down.

01:32:18

And so now I don't use the amp as much. And I try and interact with people as they come by.

01:32:27

But you know, once in a while, I will still use it, but not nearly as much. But I don't have a problem with it. I just don't want to sound too loud and overbearing and be disrespectful.

01:32:37

So it just depends kind of where you're at, too. Anthony? Yeah. You know, so it's rare that we've run into issues, at least in downtown

01:32:46

Cleveland and some of the suburbs we've been in. And that is whether we are preaching without an amplifier or with an amplifier.

01:32:54

I've been approached on different college campuses, especially ones where they don't really have

01:32:59

Christian preachers on or haven't had them in a long time, as far as I'm aware of. And so I've been approached on a number of campuses, none in Cleveland anymore.

01:33:07

Those have all smoothed over and we're doing our thing there. But this is what

01:33:13

I've done. When I've had college officials come up to me and ask me what I'm doing,

01:33:19

I say, you know what, I'm exercising my First Amendment rights here by proclaiming the

01:33:27

Christian message of good news of the gospel here. And I can assure you while I'm here that I'm being very respectful to your students and being very kind, but while also exercising my rights.

01:33:39

And then what I'll do is I kind of shift a little bit. And I'm very calm, very nice about this. And I'll say, you know, the last thing you and I want to do is have to end up with lawyers and have to have issues over you guys stopping me with my

01:33:54

First Amendment rights. Because, you know, this is a public campus, public college. And that means that the entire campus is actually a free speech zone.

01:34:02

You can't have a certain zone somewhere in a corner of the campus. The entire campus is free speech. And the last thing you want to do is get in trouble for this.

01:34:09

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue to do this for another hour or so. And I'll continue to respect your students who

01:34:16

I've been doing this the whole time. And every single time I've done that, they've just kind of looked at me, kind of stumped.

01:34:22

And then they're like, OK, and they walk away. I've never been kicked off a college campus when I do it just that way.

01:34:29

So you're establishing your ground. You're not putting a veiled threat out there, but you kind of are.

01:34:36

You're kind of establishing the boundaries. Like, I'm being kind. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm well within my rights.

01:34:42

And the last thing you want to do is end up on the news type of deal. Yeah. What I like there,

01:34:48

Anthony, too, is you demonstrate a calm confidence that you've got the right to be there, right?

01:34:56

You're not getting up in their face. You're just stating the facts in a calm way. I think, you know, just like it says, you know, a kind word, you know, turns away wrath, right?

01:35:07

So if they see you interacting and getting all up in the air, they're going to react in kind, right?

01:35:14

Whereas if you have that calm confidence, you know, like Paul, when he got arrested, you know, is it right to beat a

01:35:20

Roman citizen without a trial, right? Just that simple approach of calm confidence,

01:35:26

I think, goes a long ways. Yeah, that's right. And I'll share one other thing, too. You know, I've spent some time in doing evangelism training and other types of training down at Beulah Baptist Church with Dr.

01:35:36

Casey Butner in Florida. And one of the Saturday mornings, we were out doing open air evangelism outside of a farmer's market.

01:35:45

I was open air preaching. Now, the guys that go there regularly have never open air preached. So this is the first time this happened.

01:35:52

And I'm up there, I'm open air preaching. And within a few minutes, this little police officer, a little female police officer walks over.

01:35:59

And she just stands there, looks up. And I put my thing down, said, can I help you?

01:36:05

And she's like, you know, we've got city ordinances here about too loud of volume.

01:36:11

And I say, so now here's something that we all should do if we're using an amplifier.

01:36:18

The first question we should ask is, oh, thank you, officer, for coming over. What was the decibel reading of this, just so I know?

01:36:26

And what you're doing is you're establishing the fact that cities have decibel ordinances that they have to go by in general.

01:36:34

And that there's actual readings that are written into city code, usually, what they have to go by.

01:36:41

So if they come over to you and tell you're being too loud subjectively, that may allow you to continue to do your open air evangelism with an amplifier.

01:36:51

In this particular case, she says, well, I don't have a decibel reader. And actually, the way the city code is written right now is if somebody can hear you 50 feet away and interrupting their own conversation, that would be against the noise ordinance.

01:37:06

And she goes, honestly, once somebody challenges it, it's not going to hold up in court.

01:37:12

I know that. But for right now, that is the law. And she's like, so if you could just do me one favor, just move that way a little bit, and you can keep on going.

01:37:21

And so I literally moved 50 feet down the sidewalk. And I kept on preaching and it was a little victory and call it good.

01:37:32

Yeah, I mean, and this and that's one of the things I mean, you guys said a lot of what I was going to say is first off, know the law.

01:37:40

So, you know, we had places, look, we had an event in Wyoming, where they already ahead of time knew, okay, this area is public property.

01:37:52

And so here's one of the things when you're on a property that is open to the public, like a mall, railroad station, there's actually a law that says that they have to have a written times, means and manner, or times, times, means and location document.

01:38:13

And so we're in Wyoming and, you know, the one guy wants to shut us down because we're right in front of where the buses are.

01:38:19

That was public property. And he says, well, we have a permit for this area. I said, okay, does your permit include your written, you know, times, means and location policy?

01:38:32

He goes, yeah, it's in the office. I said, okay, well, once you get it, we can talk about that. But other than that, without that document, this is open to the public, right?

01:38:41

Then the officer shows, the guy, the security guard shows the officer a badge and then shuts us down, right?

01:38:49

So here's the thing though, a couple of things to know with it. We, you know, as Anthony said, when

01:38:54

I talk to an officer, be respectful. If they move you, you don't know.

01:39:01

I've been in events where they were like, hey, can you go over there? And that event, that new area was actually better.

01:39:07

That can happen. But you establish your rights, you establish what the officer,

01:39:13

I mean, one of the things is the officer, just keep in mind, the officer does not want to deal with you unless you're prideful.

01:39:22

You get arrogant and he's going to win that day. He may not win in court, but he's going to win on the street that day.

01:39:29

And so you want to be polite. It's good to ask questions as Anthony was doing. What's the decibel reading?

01:39:35

Some places say, you know, it doesn't matter. You can't amplify anything. But there's sometimes where you come out, you know, we were out at Rutgers University and Mike Stockwell was preaching.

01:39:46

We already had a recorded, one of the guys, this guy, Mike, had recorded the chief of police saying we could amplify.

01:39:54

And yet, because someone called, we were being shut down.

01:40:00

Now, the reality was Mike and I were playing good cop, bad cop while Michael Stockwell was preaching.

01:40:06

They gave Michael Stockwell the ticket and we're like, why is he getting the ticket? He like has no idea of this conversation, you know.

01:40:13

And it was funny because one of the things I said to the captain when she came out, I said, you're going to give a ticket to a man who served his country honorably when he has no idea what's going on?

01:40:24

And she actually went to the officer and she goes, hey, don't give him a ticket. He's like, well,

01:40:30

I already did. And it was like, duh, okay, you know. Now, he beat the ticket, even though they changed it several times.

01:40:37

But here's the thing, you know, I know in New York City, at Union Square, a place

01:40:44

Anthony knows well, you can't amplify in that area, period.

01:40:49

That's the park's rule. I amplify there all the time. Why? I amplify there all the time because I don't bring my big half -mile hailer there.

01:40:59

I bring a small amplifier. And I remember in all the places we're called, the officer comes over to me.

01:41:07

He says, you can't amplify. I said, and I just said, officer, I mean, you know what it's like out here, right? And he's like,

01:41:12

I said, you know, it gets crazy. He goes, yeah. I said, I want everything being done decently and in order. I don't want things getting out of hand.

01:41:19

And just having the amplification helps so we have a good dialogue one at a time.

01:41:24

I'm not looking to blow the volume so loud that the stores around us are not able to have their folks come in and enjoy the restaurants or whatever.

01:41:37

I just want it for the area right in front here of people we're talking to. Would I be able to do that so we can have things, not have things get out of hand?

01:41:46

Now, what am I doing? I'm appealing to what the officer wants, right? And so he's like, all right, sure.

01:41:54

I'm telling you. Now, and Anthony, you know some of our regular hecklers. They thought I must have paid off the officer because they know the law and the officer let me do it.

01:42:04

And I have never had a problem there ever since using the same thing, even though the law is really clear that there you can amplify.

01:42:13

Now, there's sometimes where, you know, on the boardwalk in Jersey, we had where, you know, there used to be a church that had a booth there.

01:42:21

And the officer, we had one officer was drove a witness every year he'd try to move me. He'd be like, oh, you have to be over there.

01:42:28

All your whole team has to be right there. I'm like, but this is public property. We have the right. Now here's the thing.

01:42:35

Someone on that boardwalk years before, I found out about this at the very first Jersey fire event we did.

01:42:41

And someone came up and said that he was thrown off that boardwalk for handing out tracks. So he's warning us. And he said, you know, he got arrested for handing out tracks and he beat it in court.

01:42:52

I said, good. Now that you beat it in court, go sue the person who arrested you.

01:42:58

And he's like, what? I said, yeah, you can do that. But if once you beat it in court and it's shown that they violate your civil liberties, you can sue an officer, someone in law enforcement if they violate your civil liberties.

01:43:11

And so that happened. Years later, because I'm dealing with this same guy that keeps trying to move me or shut me down.

01:43:19

I got to know the head of violations down there. He's the one that threw the person off the beach.

01:43:26

So he's telling me a story of why he's so cautious with us guys, because he basically, the judge told him,

01:43:34

I'm not going to, you know, have you guilty now. You're not going to go to jail. But if you throw anyone off this beach again, you now know you're guilty, you're going to jail.

01:43:44

So this guy was really cautious because he's the head of violation. So anyone under him, same thing.

01:43:50

So I got to build a good relationship with him. And every year when the start of the summer,

01:43:56

I would call him up because we would always have a problem the first night. And so after a while,

01:44:01

I realized I'll just call this guy directly. So I call him and he gave me his cell phone.

01:44:06

He's like, if you have any problems, call me directly. And I would call him ahead of time and say, we're going to go, we're going to be out

01:44:12

Friday night. Is that going to be OK? He's and he would, he would try to make sure he's there. Right now, it's good if you can build a longstanding relationship.

01:44:21

If you're going to the same place, you could build a relationship like John was saying with the local officials and police.

01:44:28

That is helpful. But just remember, the police also wants to catch bad guys.

01:44:34

They don't want to catch you unless you get in their face. And, you know, you just represent paperwork to them and they hate paperwork, right?

01:44:45

So they're, you know, they don't want to have to deal with you for the most part, unless you get one.

01:44:50

Like I've had in New York City, I had a Muslim, and, you know, the Jehovah Witness in Jersey.

01:44:56

But for the most part, they don't want to deal with you. So just keep that in mind. Be respectful when you talk to them.

01:45:03

Ask questions. You know, we were at Rutgers University. It was Mike Stockwell, myself and another fella,

01:45:10

Robert. And we ended up, you know, someone complained because when

01:45:16

Robert was asked about homosexuality, he says, well, go here, go talk to my friend over here and he'll talk to you.

01:45:24

And so Mike Stockwell just read what scripture, and this is what he did. He just read what scripture, you know, said.

01:45:30

Well, the person called the police. And everyone on the team thought that the police were just shutting us down.

01:45:37

And we had one guy that was just getting, you know, very agitated with the police officer. And I just walked over and I was in a conversation, but I had to stop it.

01:45:47

And I said, you know, I just asked the officer a question. I said, officer, are you shutting us down? And he's like, no,

01:45:52

I have to do a report because, you know, I was asked. I said, okay, so would we be able to continue?

01:45:59

And I just started asking questions. And I said, officer, look, we don't want things getting crazy. We don't want you having to get phone calls.

01:46:04

It's a pain for you to have to deal with that. You know, we want to exercise our freedom of speech.

01:46:10

We don't want to have someone practicing a heckler's veto. And if you don't know what heckler's veto is, when someone tries to shout over you to prevent you from practicing free speech.

01:46:19

And I've called the police when people would blast a radio or, you know, have their own amplification to try to drown us out.

01:46:27

And you could do that. Because truthfully, the person who calls the police, that's usually the one the police side with, just so you know.

01:46:34

But, you know, we just sat there and talking to the officer. Well, I told you the event when

01:46:41

Mike Stockwell got the ticket. Well, guess what? The officer that gave him the ticket remembered me because what ended up happening is he said, yeah, you guys keep preaching because I talked to him.

01:46:54

And so when the captain came over and had the issues and I came over, the guy who ended up being instructed to give the ticket to Mike Stockwell, he said, hey, talk to him.

01:47:05

He's reasonable. Something he remembered. Why? Because of the way

01:47:10

I conducted myself. So just keep that in mind. And as far as amplification, you know, you gotta know the area.

01:47:18

Jersey Shore, I know that I could put my two half -mile hailers, one in both directions, and I go for it.

01:47:24

Because I know that they're not gonna do it now. The guy head of violations has retired. So, you know, I haven't been out since his retirement.

01:47:30

So I have to see if I have to build all new relations. But I know I could do that there. They could hear me on a

01:47:36

Ferris wheel all the way down the boardwalk. I can't do that in New York City, right?

01:47:41

In Union Square. So you gotta know the area. And sometimes you may learn just from, okay,

01:47:47

I gotta shut down for tonight. You know, I gotta not amplify. You know, I had a case where, you know, someone called, you know, because we're in New York and there was a guy who, a supposed

01:48:01

Christian who was very upset because there was a topless girl over on the side. And he thought the only thing

01:48:06

I should do is point out her sin. Well, the reality is it's legal in New York. So, but this guy kept calling, kept calling, kept calling.

01:48:14

So the police came out and you know what the police did? They shut me down from amplifying and they just wanted to know from her who was calling because they wanted them to stop.

01:48:24

So all this guy accomplished was getting me shut down from amplifying. But as some of you guys know,

01:48:30

I have a voice that overcomes the amplifier anyway. So if there's no decibel meter,

01:48:37

I could be louder than my amplification. So that's not a problem for me. All right, so one more question that we had from Ed Romine.

01:48:45

And I think this may be a biased question, I think. He says, do you guys like Spurgeon?

01:48:52

Now I'm gonna tell you why I think, I personally think that he might be biased. His doctoral dissertation was on this very subject of Spurgeon and evangelism.

01:49:04

So I think there might be a bias here. But guys, do you like Spurgeon, John?

01:49:10

I saw you smile there. Yeah, there you go. I love Spurgeon.

01:49:17

Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of quotes from him on evangelism. Yeah, love him.

01:49:25

Now, Ed, I want to point something out for Ed. Do you notice Ed asks the question, what happens? Both of the guys on the bottom of the screen just left.

01:49:32

Ed, you scared off. Asking a question about Spurgeon, they went running.

01:49:39

Man, what are you doing, Ed? Who's Spurgeon? I don't know who that guy is. What do you mean? Just kidding.

01:49:46

JK. All right.

01:49:52

So let me put up again, just for folks, the link that they can go to for TulipGospelOutreach .org

01:50:04

if you want to participate in this outreach for 2023. It's something you guys have been doing this for a long time.

01:50:13

It's, from what I've heard from you, a fun event. This is May 4th to the 23rd. The 6th of 2023 in Iowa.

01:50:19

So encourage you guys to check that out. John, any last things you want to say?

01:50:27

No, yeah. Love to have anybody and everybody out here. It's a great opportunity to do this.

01:50:36

Yeah. Love to meet other evangelists. Love to labor side by side with others.

01:50:43

So come on out. Anthony, any closing comments you have?

01:50:49

You know, I'm excited for it. I'm excited for seeing the tulips, of course. And now that I found out about the windmill.

01:50:55

But, you know, I'm really excited about being able to evangelize for three straight days, talking to as many people as possible during the time that we're out there.

01:51:04

And I will say that some of the teaching that we're doing. I don't know, John, if you want to tell everyone what you're going to be teaching on first.

01:51:12

Yeah. So I've got two teaching sessions, you know, one Thursday morning, one

01:51:17

Friday morning. The first one is mostly an introduction. So I go into a little bit more depth on, you know, some of the

01:51:25

Christian history. So people are new to this. They kind of have that background and engaging in that conversation with people.

01:51:33

But I also highlight what we're doing, what tracks we're using, right, you know, through the rest of the event as well.

01:51:42

And then Friday morning, I'm going to, I'm putting out a new talk because, right, on glorifying

01:51:49

God in creation, right? So most people look at Romans 1 .18,

01:51:56

right? And they say, hey, you know, there are no atheists, right? Because God has made it plain to them, right?

01:52:04

And how does he close that? He says he's made it plain to them through what has been made. So through creation.

01:52:11

So looking at ways that we can use creation to share the gospel, right, as a powerful tool, right?

01:52:18

I also have, right, my day job is in software engineering, right?

01:52:24

So I bring some of those aspects in that we see engineering and engineering principles in creation, which is also evidence that there is a designer out there, right?

01:52:37

These things don't happen naturally. So there'll be a few things there we'll talk through.

01:52:43

And I know, Anthony, you and I have talked about a few of these little pieces, you know, here and there. So try and get those things kind of incorporated into the talk.

01:52:53

Yeah, I'm really excited to hear it. What's funny is that I typically speak on creation. I'm speaking on no topics on creation.

01:53:00

I do love time. You'll be doing a creation topic. I'll be doing a basic evangelism training the first day.

01:53:07

And then I'll be doing a history of social justice. So the history and evils of social justice movement.

01:53:13

So I have a three -hour seminar we're condensing down to a little over an hour and give people a really good understanding of what's going on.

01:53:21

And it really helps explain what we are seeing today, not just in critical race theory and intersectionality, but what

01:53:28

I think are the most dangerous components of social justice, which is homosexuality, transgenderism, climate change.

01:53:35

Some of those other issues that's coming down the pike. And then one of my favorite topics is you're giving me three whole hours for this, which

01:53:43

I am delighted with, which is Saturday morning, which is presuppositional apologetics.

01:53:50

And I know there's a lot of people who have attempted to read Bonson and Van Til and others and are left with a headache within the first 10 minutes.

01:53:58

And I get it. It leaves me with the exact same headache, which is why I spent a lot of time, a lot of time picking

01:54:05

Andrew's brain and others on how to write my book and then how to start teaching on a very lay level presuppositionalism that I've seen middle schoolers learn and be able to use.

01:54:17

And so if you come to the training at Tulip time and you pay attention,

01:54:23

I guarantee you, you will walk out understanding presuppositionalism for the first time in your lives. So I'm really excited for it.

01:54:32

And let me just mention later on tonight, actually, in about half an hour, if those of you who follow me on Twitter, I will be joining

01:54:41

Joel Setekes from the Think Institute. And we will be discussing what

01:54:50

Anthony just said. So we're going to be discussing some issues with presuppositional apologetics.

01:54:57

So that is some challenges that have been made. And so that is on Twitter only. So my Twitter handle is at Andrew underscore

01:55:04

SFA. If you don't follow me on Twitter, I encourage you go do that. But I have the link up there.

01:55:11

Saturday, April 15th, I will be at the Vietnamese Alliance Church doing an apologetics seminar.

01:55:19

Can we trust the Bible? And also on, oh,

01:55:25

I forgot my second topic. Hold on. I'll look and see. I should know it. Oh, yeah, that's right.

01:55:31

So how do we know the Bible is true? And can it be trusted? The second one is how do we know Christianity is true?

01:55:38

Anthony already mentioned the Reforming Families Conference. That's the end of April, the first week of May.

01:55:45

I will be at Cruciform Conference. Then this time I'll be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So encourage you guys to be there.

01:55:53

Also, if you're in the Philadelphia area, May 13th, I have a men's conference. One Day Men's Conference.

01:56:00

I'll be talking about doing an overview of the life of Joseph and Abraham. So that is something for you.

01:56:08

So those are some of the places that will be. Also want to let you guys know we're going to be doing something.

01:56:15

If you choose to want to support Striving for Eternity, just to give you guys who are regulars some updates on the ministry.

01:56:25

So looking at last year compared to the year before, we know it's been tough with the economy.

01:56:32

And so we actually had our book sales were down 25 percent. Our donations were down 25 percent, but our expenses were up by 25 percent.

01:56:40

So it's gone the wrong way. The basically what we've noticed is that flying is really increased in price.

01:56:51

Same with hotels and things like that. So if you would want to donate, we have several things.

01:56:56

We're going to a shameless bribe, shall we say, to the first people that donate this month.

01:57:04

And we're probably going to give away things each month. I did on my Wrap Report podcast an interview about this book,

01:57:11

Purposeful and Persistent Parenting by people I know. Actually, John and Cindy, John actually married my daughter.

01:57:21

He did the wedding ceremony. We also have some of our old conferences that we were talking about that we're going to give away.

01:57:28

The NorCal Fire talks about getting Christianity right. So it talks about getting the

01:57:33

Word of God right, getting the Trinity right, the nature of man, salvation. Jersey Fire from 2023 is on presuppositional apologetics.

01:57:42

Myself, Jason Lyles, Sy Timbrook and Kate. And then we had in this is a double one.

01:57:48

This is both the which ones? This is both Ohio and I think it's both

01:57:54

Ohio and California or Ohio and Jersey. But this is on the family.

01:57:59

So a whole bunch of events on the family. This has Emile Zwayne, Phil Johnson, Phil Sessa, Mark Spence, Carl Kirby and Carl Kirby Jr.

01:58:11

as well. So these are some things to the first six people that donate to at strivingforhearing .org

01:58:20

support. The first one who donates gets to pick the first gift. So if you're first, you get to pick what you want first.

01:58:29

As the next ones, the sixth one, well, you're going to get what's ever left. And we'll probably do this each month.

01:58:34

So that's something we're doing to try to help raise some support for the ministry so that we can get to because one of the things we do, folks, is we go to churches that basically can't afford us.

01:58:45

We go to small churches where all the other big ministries ignore them. And that's who we target because that's who needs help.

01:58:53

And so if you guys want to continue to support us, to help us out, feel free to do that strivingforhearing .org

01:59:01

support. We would greatly appreciate it. It allows us to do some of the things like these shows.

01:59:07

So if you're getting value out of this, we would we would appreciate it. So with that,

01:59:14

I think we'll be next week. I think next week will be an open Q &A. As far as I know, I don't think,

01:59:19

Anthony, we don't have anything. You announced earlier in the show that you're going to be going over the Israel trip.

01:59:25

No, no, that's on my rap report. Oh, that's in the rap report. Oh, yeah, that's on the rap report podcast. And there's actually a video that's linked to that, that will premiere on our

01:59:34

Striving for Eternity YouTube channel at eight o 'clock that night, that Wednesday night. So yeah, so there you go.

01:59:43

And with that, that's a wrap. Oh, wait, that's the other program. That's my other program.