Can You Hear Me Now

Introduction

Well, as our members know, and for the sake of our visitors, this is uh the conclusion of our teen weekend. Uh this is a weekend we uh host every year annually for our our teenagers, and uh we’ve been privileged this weekend to have Brother Terry Francis with us. Uh I think it’s been uh good time, well spent. Hopefully the teenagers will be saying that at the end of the day today. Uh they got together and spent time with Terry just uh socializing and having a good time over some good food Friday evening. Terry uh worked with them in several sessions yesterday and they had lunch together as well. And then uh Terry uh taught the class with the teenagers at the 10 o’clock hour this morning.

Of course, we were privileged to hear him speak at uh the nine o’clock hour, and he’s gonna speak again in just a minute. Just a uh uh a very brief introduction. Terry is from Chelsea, Alabama, where he’s currently working full-time as an evangelist. Uh prior to that he spent uh a number of years at uh the one of the churches in uh Memphis, Tennessee. Uh Vicky and I first met Terry, I don’t know, six or seven years ago. Gregory, our son, was uh interning, uh doing an evangelistic internship with Terry, spent that whole summer with him. And since then we’ve stayed in touch with Terry and have uh grown to love and appreciate and respect him. He loves God, he loves the Word of God, and he loves and enjoys proclaiming it, and he’s very dedicated to doing that.

And so we we are thankful that uh Terry is with us. We’re thankful for the good hard work that he put in in preparing for this weekend, and uh hopefully you will appreciate uh the lesson that he’s about to bring to us. So, Brother Terry. Well, let me begin with uh my thanks to the church here for their uh invitation to be with you again. It’s not our first time together, and certainly uh am grateful for that and have really enjoyed our time together, and I hope the the young people uh have at least halfway enjoyed it as much as I have. They were you you’re blessed with a great group of young people, I believe. And they high character and uh really great people. They’re a great resource for you, and I hope you use them for that, and uh so good to see them and to be with them.

And thankful for again the elders here and uh got to know some of them over the years coming back and forth. But I especially want to just for a moment uh talk about Greg. And believe it or not, in a in a nice way, so um this will be uh unusual for Greg. Uh I I did work with Greg and uh and have enjoyed watching Greg grow. And I am proud of the man he is and the evangelist that he is. And what Greg has in you is very special. It is very odd to go home. The Bible says that the prophet is not welcome in his own land, and uh that speaks more about you than Greg, by the way, before he gets too big of a head.

Uh that you are just a tremendous group that has played such a role in his growth. And uh, while you’ve been blessed to have him here for the years he’s been here, and I’m sure at some point he’ll end up going somewhere else. It is probably inevitable because you will get tired of him. But you have done a tremendous thing by giving Greg to the kingdom of God as you raised him. He attended weekends just like we had this weekend. And those things helped form him. And I hope maybe this weekend that we were able to form the next Greg. And that some of these young men will grow up to be great workers in the kingdom like he has. And love Kashka and pray for Kashka for putting up for Greg.

But anyway, that’s a whole nother thing. But certainly grateful to be with him. Pray for me. I’m returning home this afternoon, and I have a workshop I’m teaching tomorrow, and the real reason I need your prayers is Greg’s riding back with me, so I have nine hours of Greg to look forward to. So pray for about that. We’re going to end by talking about evangelism. Raise your hand if you know Paul Marcarelli. Nobody knows Paul Marchi. Really?

Everybody knows Paul Marchi. He is the actor that is the Can You Hear Me Now guy for Verizon. And while you may not know his name, you know his speech, which wasn’t much of a speech. I mean, you think about how this guy uttering five words in various locations of the country was able to convince a majority of our world that Verizon was the superior network. In a time, quite frankly, where when you went to Verizon, you were giving up something that was a pretty big thing to give up. Because when Marco Relly started as a spokesman for Verizon, you couldn’t own an iPhone and have Verizon. And so the only way they were able to convince Verizon to be such a strong brand, despite not having access to the iPhone, was to convince you that they were the most stable network on the planet.

And that’s what kept them in business. And you see, the reality is that small campaign, well, I say small, lasted 10 years. And then Marco Relly went and worked for Sprint, which is a whole other thing. But he became Verizon’s chief evangelist. Now you don’t think about people on TV and commercials as evangelists, do you? And yet that is what they are. They are messengers that share a message of good news. It just happens to be good news about a product. Marketing today is largely a form of evangelism for those companies. That’s what they’re doing. And it is interesting, in fact, and again, I warned you at 9 o’clock and kind of a into this marketing advertising kind of nerd thing. I like kind of reading about this stuff.

And one of the reasons is one of the things that got me talking about that and started talking about that is there is a whole area of marketing called evangelism marketing. It was started by a guy named Guy Kawasaki. Anybody ever heard of him? Let me tell you who Guy Kawasaki is this way. Raise your hand if you use a PC. Not an Apple computer, but a PC. Raise it high. Keep your hand up if you are tired of people telling you you should use an Apple product. You put your hand down now. Raise your hand if you use an Apple product. Raise your hand if you tell people they should be using Apple products. Gal Kaiwasaki was the original evangelism marketing guru of our world.

And his first marketing tool or marketing promotion was the Apple II computer. And what he did was he developed a cult behind Apple that said, your life is better if you will use this product. And that mentality began with the Apple II and has gone through every Apple product since. Because if you’re like me and everything is Apple, and you see somebody rip out a Samsung Galaxy, you feel sorry for them. Because their life is miserable. Because this logo is not on the back of their phone. And you may laugh about that, but there is something about the Apple culture that is ingrained in us Apple users that say, your life is not as good as it could be because you’re not using this product. And it was the best evangelism marketing campaign that has ever existed.

Still goes on today. Thirty years later. It has created that culture. This morning, what I want us to do is I want us to learn from Guy Kawasaki and from the marketing world about evangelism. I’m going to share with you not all of his 11 principles because we don’t have time, but I’m going to share about seven of his principles about evangelism marketing to help you understand. And here’s how he describes an evangelist. Listen to this. An evangelist has the other person’s best interest at heart. Quote, try this because it will help you. Keep this difference in mind and you’ll be on the right track. When we think about evangelism, by the way, we’re not selling a product, but we are sharing the good news about Jesus.

And I have to tell you something that I’ve noticed about that. We are not doing a good job at it. You know why I know that? Because in all churches, in all churches of all denominations and variety, less than 5% are actually growing through evangelism. And that applies to us too. I trained, like Greg, in an internship at a church in Nashville, Tennessee, under Wilson Adams. Oddly enough, Wilson’s son Dale is here this morning. It’s good to see him. But you know what’s interesting is that church does not exist anymore. Its doors are closed. And I wish that was a rare story. But not only are we not growing, there are churches dying out every year. Because we’re not doing our job in evangelism. And part of it is we’re not convinced of this.

We’re not really convinced that our friends and our family that don’t have the gospel that their life would be better with the gospel. We’re actually convinced their life is better with me in their life. Here’s how I know that. Because I don’t talk to them about Jesus because I’m afraid that I’ll lose that relationship. And rather than make their life better with the gospel, I simply preserve our earthly relationship. If that’s my action, if that’s my primary choice, what do I value more? Their soul and a better life? Or my friendship with them.

1. Make It Great

Before we ever implement any part of evangelism marketing, we have to be convinced their life is better with Jesus than without it. So let me begin with the first principle as we think about that in mind. The first thing you have to do with evangelism is you have to make it great. You cannot evangelize junk, in other words. One of the reasons why Apple is so successful at this, for instance, is because they are far superior products to any other products in their market. But the whole premise of the Verizon campaign was what? Our network is better than ATT’s network. Our network is greater than ATT’s network. You have better coverage with us. Your callers will hear you when we use our network. One of the great things about the gospel is you do not have to make it great.

It already is. Amen. You’re supposed to say amen to that. Amen. Romans 1 and verse 16. You remember that passage? For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jews and also to the Greek. The gospel is the power of God for salvation. You don’t have to make that great. It already is. Turn back to 2 Kings 5, which I know is a weird place to go, but it’s the story of Naaman. And I want you to notice something in 2 Kings chapter 5 about this that applies to evangelism. I am a fan, by the way, outside of apple products and other things, I will also tell you about the greatness of the English Standard Version Bible, and I know some of you may disagree with me about that.

But one of the reasons I like the ESV is because of 2 Kings chapter 5. We know the story of Naaman, how that Naaman has leprosy. He wants to be healed, and so a servant girl says, hey, if you’ll go back to my homeland in Israel, there’s a prophet there that can tell you how to be healed. He goes expecting some great fanfare and some great thing. And, well, Elisha doesn’t even come out and talk to it. He sends a servant out and says, just go dip in the Jordan seven times, you’ll be all right. And the Jordan wasn’t as great as he thought, and he kind of expected something else, and so he goes home and he says, I’m not going to do that. And that gets us to the verse that’s important, verses 13 and 14.

In 2 Kings chapter 5 and verse 13 and 14, it says, But his servants came near and said to him, My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, wash it be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. It is interesting in other translations that what it will say is, had he asked you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? And our traditional teaching of 2 Kings 5, based on that translation, has been, hey, look, this is obviously a parallel to baptism.

2. Position It as a Cause and Love the Cause

And for those of you that are upset about baptism, why not just do it? It’s really no big deal. You see why I don’t like that? Let me tell you, the reality is what is offered through baptism is a big deal. It is a great thing. And just like for Naaman, it was a big deal. It was a great thing to have his leprosy taken away. What we have is the ability to take people’s spiritual leprosy away, to remove their sins by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is a great thing you have to evangelize about. You don’t have to make it great. It is great already. We have to view it as great. Secondly, position it as a cause. Evangelists need to seize the moral high ground and transcend the exchange of money for goods and services.

Here’s a quote A product or service, no matter how great is a collection of parts or snippets of code. A cause, by contrast, changes lives. It’s not enough to make a great product or service. You also need to position it and explain it as a way to improve lives. Steve Jobs didn’t position an iPhone as $188 worth of parts. Evangelist sees the moral high ground and transcend the exchange of money for goods and services. In other words, you’re not selling something. This is something more than that. It’s greater than that. You know what happens to us in evangelism? We talked about this young people a little bit before I came in here, is we often get bogged down in evangelism and we turn it into debates and arguments.

We think evangelism is a competition to see who has more Bible knowledge or is able to win the argument to commit somebody else. Greg understands that. Greg was a debater. That was one of the things we had to try to break him up. He wanted to debate me about everything. Argue about everything. And there may be a time and place about that, but the reality is when you’re talking to somebody about evangelism, about changing their life, you don’t need to be arguing with them. What you need to do is present what Romans 6 23 says. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You are giving them eternal life. You don’t have to position this as a cause.

It is already a cause. It has already been developed by God. You are giving them a free gift of eternal life. It reminds me of the lame man in Acts chapter 3, where he goes in, Peter and John to the temple. He has laid there for 40 years. He is begging for money. And Peter says, silver and gold have I none, but what I have, I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Rise and walk. And he gets up and walk. Now let me ask you, what was greater? The few cents he could have given that man or the life-changing ability to walk. You offer something far greater. Far greater than the ability to walk. You give the ability to live. One of the things you have to understand in this way is that evangelism is not, an evangelist is not a job title.

It’s a way of life. That everywhere you go and everywhere you walk, you have this ability to give somebody the greatest of gifts, eternal life. And in order to see that in your life, in order to be that kind of a person and have that cause, you’re not only going to position it as a cause in your life, but you have to love that cause in your life. No matter how great the person is, if he doesn’t love the cause, he cannot be a great evangelist. There is no doubt that you are here this morning and you could be at other places that you love God. You love the Lord. That you’ve set aside this time to serve him and to serve his people. But do you love the gospel?

Do you love the life-giving message of the story of Jesus Christ? Do you love it enough that you try to share it every time you can? Do you love the promotion of the gospel? Do you love the opportunity to sit down and talk about the gospel? Do you love the cause? Paul was the greatest evangelist this earth has ever seen. And if you want to know why, the answer is found in Romans chapter 9 in the first three verses. In Romans chapter 9, starting in verse 1, listen to what he says. I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.

What made Paul such a great evangelist that he would have been willing to suffer for eternity himself to save all of his fellow brethren of Israel? That’s how much he loved the cause of salvation. We are in contact with people every day who are lost. And we say nothing.

Do we not love the cause? Do we not love the salvation of men’s souls? Now you may think that’s harsh, but you remember the story of a little boy in the starfish, right? That the tide had come in and washed hundreds of starfish onto the bank. And he was picking them up one at a time and throwing them back into the water. And an older man walked by and said, son, you can’t save all of them. By the way, that’s why we don’t evangelize Moors, because we are so discouraged, we go, you can’t save all of them. You know what the little boy said? I can save this one. Throw it back in the water.

3. Localize the Pitch

That’s got to be our mindset. That we want to save every person we can. And while we know we cannot save all of them, we love the cause enough that we can save this one. And we do. Once you love the cause, you need to localize the pitch. Don’t use a lot of fancy terminology. In the business world, terminology like paradigm shifting and revolutionary and curb jumping. I love this last quote on the slide, by the way, by Kawasaki. People don’t buy revolutions. They buy aspirin to fix pain or vitamins to supplement their lives. And the point there is give people what they need. Boil it down to what they need. Let me tell you, the reality is when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to dress it up.

We don’t have to make it big terms. We don’t have to make it bigger than it is. And I think sometimes that’s our problem. Is we try to make it this big grand presentation, so big that it intimidates us that suddenly the only people that are capable and qualified are the elders and the evangelists. And the rest of us can’t do that. By the way, during our class time, what we did is I shared with the young people how to share the story of the gospel in less than 20 minutes. We did it in 15. You know what that means? It does not have to be made great. You want to know how to localize the pitch. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verses 3 and 4.

And this is the pitch. And if you go back to the story of Acts and you read every lesson, every speech about Jesus that you can read there, you are going to see the same components that are found here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verses 3 and 4. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with scriptures. You want to localize the pitch. You want to focus down on what’s important. You want to make sure that you can teach the gospel in the simplest terms. It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is what saves men from their sins.

4. Let People Take a Test Drive

And that is what is important. That is why the eunuch, when he is reading Isaiah 53, and Philip says, Do you understand this? How can I, unless somebody explains it? He begins there, and what does he teach him? The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Localize the pitch. Make sure you understand what it is. Jesus is the message. And then let people take a test drive. Now that’s a little hard to do, because if it’s a computer, I can just open up my MacBook and I can let you see how superior that is. Or I can let you use my phone. In fact, if you go to an Apple store, do you realize that’s what they do? The Apple store doesn’t really have salespeople. Have you ever been to an Apple store?

All it is is tables of their products that they let you in. They will let you sit there for hours and play with their product. Test drive the product. Well, that’s a lot harder to do when it comes to the gospel, isn’t it? How do I do that? Can’t really let somebody test drive that. Reminds me of the story in John chapter 1. In John chapter 1, turn over there when Jesus is calling his disciples, and he has called one of them whose name was Philip. And look there in John 1, starting in verse 43. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethia, the city of Andrew and Peter. Recover from verse 45.

Philip found Nathaniel and said, We have found him, of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Come and see. Let me tell you the equivalent of the test drive for us. It is, come and see. Why do y’all worship so weird? Come to see. You really think the gospel’s going to make me a better person? Come hang out with some of my friends from church. Come and see the kind of people they are. See how we treat and love each other. You say you really teach the word and nothing but the word? You really believe that? Come and see.

Now, in order to do that, what do we have to do? We have to only teach the word. We have to worship in a way that is not only scriptural, but more importantly, is full of passion and zeal, by the way. And we really have to love each other and act like changed people. If we’re going to let people test drive the gospel, what we have to let them do is come and see the effects of the gospel in us. Come and see.

5. Give a Demo

Give a demo. Now, again, you may think that’s weird, but Kawasaki said this evangelist who can’t give a demo is an oxymoron. If you can’t give a great demo of your product or service, you cannot be an evangelist for it. Dealing should be second nature, even in voluntary as breathing. Now, when I was growing up, it was still in the days of the door-to-door salesman, so a demo at that time was the Kirby vacuum person came in and shampooed your rug. And then you couldn’t walk on it for four hours. You all remember that. People don’t do that anymore. In fact, somebody knocks on your door with a vacuum cleaner, you call the police. Because nobody does that. That’s not what we’re talking about. But you can demonstrate yourself what the Lord has done for you.

By the way, that is a biblical idea. We find that in 1 Timothy chapter 1. And I don’t think we normally look at that as this kind of context, but in 1 Timothy chapter 1, starting in verse 12, I want you to notice the testimony of Paul there. Look in 1 Timothy chapter 1, starting in verse 12. I thank him who has given me strength. Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me at his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason. That in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. What Paul did there is what some people call giving your testimony or witnessing. And I have to tell you that I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like those terms. But I want to tell you something. You cannot expect somebody to buy the gospel, if you’ll allow me to use that term, without hearing you testify how it’s changed you. And not just saying that you have a great group of friends, but like Paul, if you will notice what he testifies is the great change in him. Here is who I was.

6. Remember Your Friends

And here is who God has made me by his grace. That requires some vulnerability. That requires an honest openness that sometimes we don’t want to have. And yet that is exactly what is needed for us to be able to show the world what Jesus has done in us. We, our life is the demonstration of the power of the gospel. Demonstrate it. Next, remember your friends. Remember your friends. Kawasaki said this. Listen to this, I love this. Be nice to people on the way up because you will see them again on the way down.

One of the most likely people to buy a Macintosh was an Apple II user. One of the most likely people to buy an iPod was a Macintosh owner. One of the most likely likely people to buy whatever Apple puts out next is an iPhone owner. And so it goes. So remember your friends. How does that apply to us? It means that you probably need to be talking to the people you aren’t talking to about Jesus. Here’s what I mean by that. We have a tendency to choose what is in the business world called a cold call over the warm call. And what that means is we would rather go talk to somebody about the gospel that we do not know than somebody that we do know.

Why?

Because we’re afraid of losing that relationship. If my friend from high school finds out that he thinks I’m some kind of Jesus freak. We won’t be friends anymore.

If my family member that is practicing immorality, if I stand up to them and tell them that, that their soul’s in jeopardy, they may separate from me. I may never see them again because I tried to save their soul. I would rather just not say anything then. And so we try to evangelize to strangers. While the loved ones around us are dying spiritually. And we’re doing nothing about it. And yet in every other area of our world, we understand the importance of the warm call. That’s why Girl Scouts sell cookies at church. Because we all are going to buy Girl Scout cookies from one of the little girls at church. Not just because, by the way, they taste good. But because we have a relationship with her.

And cookie dough. And butter braids and all the other things that all of the fundraiser people sell. You didn’t buy them because you wanted them. You did not buy them because you need them. You bought them because of a relationship. Because of a friendship. You realize that Paul always went to the synagogues first before he talked to the Gentiles? He always started with the Jews. Why? Because he had a relationship with them. And then they would reject him and he would go to the Gentiles. Look around you this week. There are people you love who are lost. And you have the ability to save them. Do you love them that much? The hardest song for me to sing in Scripture is you never mentioned him to me.

You imagine on the day of judgment. If your cousin or your coworker or your neighbor, or somebody else that you had walked nearby and you had worked with, or you had spent time with day after day, year after year, turns to you and says, Why didn’t you say something? A salesperson has his own best interest at heart. But an evangelist has the other person’s best interest at heart. We are evangelists. What is the best thing for them? What they need more than a relationship with us is they need to be saved by the blood of the Lamb. And I have the ability to show them how to do that. I just have to love them enough to do it. We started off with Paul Mockarelli. Can you hear me now?

Conclusion

And the real reason that I chose that slogan is to simply say this. When it comes to evangelism, the simple truth is that most people can’t hear us. Because we’re not saying anything. We’re not convinced that the product is great. We don’t love the cause. And we don’t love the people around us as much as we think we do. Or they would have hurt us by now. Jesus, before he left earth, his last words were for us to go and make disciples of all the nations. That’s accomplished by doing two things. The first is baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then teaching them to observe all the things that God has commanded. That’s what evangelism is. We should be disciple makers.

Share the good news. Share Jesus. You may be here this morning, and you’re not a Christian. And while I have not talked about that, let me just tell you very quickly, because I am out of time, you need to be a child of God. God loved you enough that He sent His Son to die for you, even while you were in your sins to die for you so that you could be saved from those sins. And just like Naaman was healed from that leprosy by going down in that water and coming up, you too, through obedient baptism, can be healed from spiritual leprosy and your sins taken away. Because what Jesus said is that when you do that, and Paul says you’re united in the death and his burial and resurrection of Christ, you raise up a new creature who is cleansed.

If you want to know more about that because you don’t understand that, talk to me. Talk to Greg. Talk to someone else here. We’ll explain that to you. But if you understand that and you’ve not done that, why not? This is a great thing God has offered you. Will you not take it? Come and be washed, sanctified and justified. Be safe from your sins. Come while we sing together and stand.