New evangelism resources in Vietnam

I’m sitting at a laptop in a government hotel room in Hanoi, Vietnam. Ten days of quarantine ahead. I’m ready to teach a class to Hmong student pastors. Due to COVID, the pastor students are unable to attend classes in person. Instead, they must Zoom in. What a joy to watch that little number at the bottom corner of the screen grow as more and more students connect. We end up with 60 student pastors eager to learn about Jesus! And the topic for the course: How to make an evangelism presentation, using a set of thirty illustrative posters! How did we arrive at this exciting project?

Pastor Bounkeo Lor, Hmong Asia Ministry Coordinator, knows that it is very economical to print full color posters in Vietnam. One day, the request came in from the Vietnam pastors: “Please create an evangelism presentation that includes a set of posters!” The pastors would use the evangelism presentation throughout the hundreds of Hmong villages in Vietnam.

A script for the evangelism presentation was developed under the direction of Pastor Boun. I visited him at his home in Kansas City to review my prototype drawings. He suggested many revisions that would make the pictures more compatible with the Hmong culture. Months later Pastor Boun approved a final script and drawings. He then placed an order for 650 sets of the thirty posters to be printed in Hanoi. Each of the student pastors will teach another three or four church leaders how to make the evangelism presentation. Those church leaders would in turn teach more leaders in the remote villages.

The evangelism presentation describes the lost condition of all humanity and God’s marvelous way of saving the world from sin. A three-panel poster on infant baptism is very graphic. The baby, born with a sinful nature, has been swallowed by the Serpent! The baby is pictured in the belly of the Beast! But the third panel of the poster depicts what happens through the waters of baptism: Jesus reaches down—right through the Serpent’s mouth—and rescues the baby!

Three posters are used to explain the doctrine of Justification. In his inspired words in Romans 3:19-31, Paul uses a forensic or “courtroom” analogy to explain how we are declared “not guilty” before God. Our first poster depicts a secular courtroom scene, complete with a boy on trial, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a judge. The next poster depicts the “spiritual courtroom,” where we see Satan accusing the boy before God, demanding that the boy be sentenced to eternal punishment. But Jesus, our mediator, our defender, declares that he has already taken the punishment the boy deserves. God declares the boy “not guilty!”

It would be exciting to describe all the posters, because they illustrate the amazing love of God for once-lost sinners, But I will mention one more, the final poster in the set of thirty. In the picture, Jesus stands in his white robe behind a white-robed boy. The hands of Jesus rest on the boy’s shoulders. The picture explains what it means to be God’s own child in a constant state of grace under the loving hands of our Savior. As Paul explains in Galatians 3:26-27: “In fact you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Indeed, as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ” (EHV).

Our Vietnam student pastors ponder with excitement that last picture. Is this truly how we appear before God—all the time—clothed in a white robe of Christ’s righteousness? The answer for all of us through faith in Christ is a resounding “yes!” God says it many times and in many ways throughout his Word, and succinctly in these words: “I will remember your sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:12).

Written by Dr. Terry Schultz, Artistic Development Missionary for Multi-Language Productions.

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