Christian Daily International was on the ground in Berlin from May 27 to 30, 2025, where more than 1,000 evangelical pastors and ministry leaders from 56 nations gathered at the JW Marriott for the European Congress on Evangelism, hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. With the theme rooted in Romans 1:16—“For I am not ashamed of the gospel…”—the invitation-only event featured 20 speakers from 13 countries, making it the most diverse evangelical gathering in Europe since Amsterdam 2000.
Christian Daily International has been publishing articles during the congress and continues releasing in-depth reports, highlighting key sessions, interviews with Christian leaders, and insights shaping evangelistic strategy across the continent.
***
Rev. Skip Heitzig, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, delivered a passionate call for Spirit-empowered evangelism during the European Congress on Evangelism. A board member of Samaritan’s Purse and Harvest Christian Fellowship, Heitzig spoke on the topic, “The Holy Spirit Empowers Preaching the Gospel.”
Drawing from the explosive growth of the early church, Heitzig rooted his message in Acts 4:31—“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” He urged delegates to consider whether many believers today, like the disciples in Acts 19, know of the Holy Spirit in name but have never truly experienced His empowering presence. “There’s no real empowerment,” Heitzig said. “They’ve heard about the Holy Spirit in a creed, but haven’t encountered His power.”
“The empowering of the Holy Spirit was the main reason the preaching of the early church was so effective,” Heitzig pointed out.
“The idea of the Spirit held by the average church member is so vague as to be nearly non-existent,” once wrote a renowned Bible teacher, the late AW Tozer. Heitzig referred to this quote and said that he has himself found some Christians are afraid of the Holy Spirit, often because of excessive behavior in some churches.
“They just say, ‘I don't want anything to do with that.’ But listen, you never have to be afraid of a genuine move and work of the Holy Spirit. If it's really the Holy Spirit, it will be powerful. It will be done decently and in order, but, unmistakably, God will move.
The late Rev. Lloyd John Ogilvie, Presbyterian minister and 61st chaplain of the United States Senate, once said many Christians settle for only two-thirds of God: Father and Son, but not the Holy Spirit. In constrast, Heitzig said the scenario in Acts was so different with all three persons of the Trinity clearly evident.
“The Father sent the Son into the world. Jesus, the Son, purchased our salvation on Calvary, and then he sent the Holy Spirit into the church,” explained Heitzig. “And the Holy Spirit empowered the preaching, the teaching, and the function of the church in the book of Acts.
“Have you ever thought of what an impossible undertaking it was to get 12 fishermen to go into all the world and preach the gospel? That was the commission Jesus gave to 12 men who were uneducated, who knew nothing but fishing and nets and boats and a little lake.
“‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.’ We have the record in the book of Acts how the gospel within a 30-year period of time penetrated into the Roman Empire and spread throughout the empire,” Heitzig recalled the powerful upsurge in gospel witness during the days of the early church as the first Christians relied on a holistic understanding and experience of the Holy Trinity.
Heitz thus outlined three factors accounting for the success of the early church and the preaching of the apostles: the resurrection of Jesus, the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and the subsequent commissioning of the disciples by Jesus. He deconstructed this trio of still-relevant narratives as: “a new presence, a new power and a new plan.”
Firstly, with “the new presence,” Heizig told how Luke in Acts 1 referred to the earlier gospel he wrote, and the doctor interpreted this as meaning the ministry of Jesus as told in that gospel was “simply the the beginning of Jesus' ministry” and Luke was now saying he wanted to tell the rest of the story, the sequel.
“You know, we talk about the finished work of Jesus Christ, and indeed, when it comes to redemption, his work is done. He said on the cross, ‘It is finished.’ You can't add to it. You can't earn it. It's complete.”
However, in a sense there is also still an unfinished work of Jesus Christ, according to Heitzig, which is the ministry of proclamation: the Great Commission.
“Redemption is one thing, that's done. The ministry of proclamation goes on and on and on,” he said.
“In fact, you might even say the book of Acts is the only open-ended book that we have in the Bible. There are new chapters being written every day by men and women like you [delegates at the Berlin Congress] going out into your community, into your area, into your city.”
The book of Acts is not so much the “acts of the apostles” so much as the “acts of the Holy Spirit,” Heitzig pointed out, adding that the Holy Spirit is mentioned in Acts, some 55 times. The book recounts how the Holy Spirit “got hold of common individuals, empowered them, and used them.”
Heitzig then challenged any preconceptions that the acts of the Holy Spirit belong in the past, not the present day.
“If you think what you read in this book is something God used to do in times past, but doesn't continue to do, that means you're doing ministry on your own. And perhaps the reason you've lost a sense of freshness and excitement in the gospel is because you've been doing it in the energy of yourself.”
The resurrection power shown by Jesus coming back to life was a “new presence the disciples had never known before.” In fact, the whole reason for “the boldness, for the power, and for the success of the preaching of these early church members and apostles was the resurrection.”
“It's the resurrection that transformed timid fishermen into tireless evangelists,” Heitzig explained further. “It was the resurrection that changed cowards into heroes, mere men into mighty men.
“In fact, there is nothing else to account for the kind of deaths that the disciples were willing to undergo except for the resurrection,” added Heitzig, who then recounted the gruesome details of the first disciples’ deaths.
“Think how Stephen in Acts 7 was stoned to death. We are told that the apostle Matthew was chopped to pieces with a battle axe. James, the brother of John, beheaded. James the last, another one of the apostles, his brains dashed out. Peter, crucified upside down.
“What could account for people being willing to face that kind of persecution and ultimately death except they had seen the risen Christ?”
The resurrection “changed everything,” proclaimed Heitzig, referencing how the fact that Jesus bodily came back to life drew the first disciples from a place of hopelessness to what the apostle Peter called a “living hope.”
“So it is the living Christ that enables us to do ministry. We're not following a dead guy who just left a book full of sayings. Christianity is more than a worldview. It is more than a philosophical outlet. It is a person who has conquered death and promises everyone who puts their hope in Him, they will conquer death.”
A second factor in the reasons for the success of the early church was a new power. Heitzig pointed out the eagerness of the first disciples to “hit the road” evangelistically, as soon as they saw the resurrected Christ and received the Great Commission to go into all the world and proclaim him.
They “fired up with enthusiasm,” said Heitzig, but struggled with the temptation of attempting the task in their own strength. However, in Acts 1:4, Jesus tells them to wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
“Jesus says, you need the right equipment for the task,” said Heitzig. “It's like a soldier before he is sent to battle. He has to be outfitted with a helmet, gun, bullets. A mechanic, before the mechanic can fix a car, has to have the right tools, the right education.”
The gift of the Holy Spirit promised by God the Father and called forth by God the Son—Jesus, is similarly needed to equip evangelicals. Heitzig highlighted that Jesus even said it was better for him to go (John 16:7) so that the Holy Spirit could empower all followers of the Lord.
“Without the Holy Spirit to empower us, our task is impossible,” said Heitzig. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. It would be impossible to us now, as it was to 12 fishermen back then, but we have the right equipment. Infused with the power of the Spirit, it's a brand new battle, and it's one we can win.”
Heitzig added that the word for “power” in the early days of the church was “dunamis” [δυναμις] which relates to dynamic or dynamite.
“It's a new capacity,” Heitzig emphasized the inherent energy for the first believers in Christ. “One version of the Bible says, you will receive ability, efficiency, and might. That's the power of the Holy Spirit.”
A differentiation was expressed by Heitzig between the Holy Spirit coming “upon” a person and being “with” them. He said Jesus first told his disciples the Holy Spirit would dwell with them and later said in the Biblical narrative that the Holy Spirit would come upon them: “Upon is a little word called a preposition. A preposition expresses the function of a noun.”
“To be upon is very different from being with or in,” Heitzig expounded. “If I had a glass and I had a pitcher of water upon the podium [at the congress], the water is with the glass because the pitcher of water is next to the glass.
“If I began to pour the pitcher of water to fill the glass, now the water isn't just ‘with,’ but the water is ‘in’ the glass. But if I keep on pouring and keep on pouring and keep on pouring and it's overflowing the glass, now the water is ‘upon’ the glass.”
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be my witnesses,” Heitzig linked his water illustration to the command of Jesus to His followers.
Jesus spoke of these differences in encounters with the Holy Spirit, according to Heitzig, in John 7, when he stood in the temple and invited anyone who thirsts to come to Him and drink.
Firstly, the Lord said: “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (verse 38). However, He then clarifies the circumstances of receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as explained by Heitizig, when it says: “By this he [Jesus] meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (verse 39).
“So it's one thing to have the Holy Spirit with you, and in you when the Holy Spirit is upon you,” said Heitzig.
The third factor for the success of the early church was the new plan. Heitzig said the empowering of the Holy Spirit to witness to the truth of the gospel meant witnessing to non believers in “Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria” but he reminded delegates that the Lord alone knew the “times and seasons” for the kingdom of God.
The work of evangelicals was to obey the call of the Great Commission in witnessing to Christ in whatever situation they are in. In Heitzig’s own life, that has meant a pattern he has also noticed in others of expansion beginning with family, friends, neighborhood, the wider city including immigrants there and then the “whole world.”
“The greatest adventure in the world is to proclaim the gospel under the power of the Holy Spirit,” said Heitzig. “It's the greatest thrill you could ever have.“
He recalled how the first disciples were given the Great Commission after the resurrection of Jesus and “they could never go back to their mundane way of life.”
“They couldn't go back to the Sea of Galilee. They tried. They went back to fishing right after the resurrection, but it didn't last very long. They tasted the richness of the gospel. And the world's greatest evangelists were those who were empowered by the Holy Spirit, believed in the resurrected Christ, and went out to the world and unashamedly, unapologetically, preached the simple gospel.”
