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This Gospel: A Collection of Missions Sermons
This Gospel is a collection of missionary sermons preached by Dick Brogden. They are gathered here in these pages in the hope that, as you read them, you will be encouraged to love Jesus, to align with His purposes in all the earth, and to be willing to do whatever it takes for His honor.
Live Dead is a movement dedicated to planting churches among unreached people groups through teams. Our values center on intimacy with Jesus (abide), taking the gospel where it has not gone (apostle), and the willingness to pay any price (abandon) for Jesus to be glorified by every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
Live Dead is a movement dedicated to planting churches among unreached people groups through teams. Our values center on intimacy with Jesus (abide), taking the gospel where it has not gone (apostle), and the willingness to pay any price (abandon) for Jesus to be glorified by every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
- GenresChristian
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2018
16 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
About the author
Dick Brogden
13 books33 followersDick Brogden is an Assemblies of God missionary to the Middle East.
Dick and Jennifer Brogden’s passion in ministry is to bring the gospel to the Arab world by church planting in those nations. The Brogdens have lived and ministered among Muslims for the last 19 years in three African nations. Dick and Jennifer have two boys, Luke and Zack, both of whom were born and raised in Africa. They currently lead a church planting team that will equip team leaders to plant churches throughout the Arab-Muslim world.
Since university, Dick has dreamed of God using his life to bring one million Muslims to saving faith in Jesus Christ; he humbly acknowledges, however, “I may never lead many, but if I can influence some who will influence others and be a catalyst for ministry in the M*slim world, I would love to see that happen. I want to live a life to make much of God.”
Dick ministers alongside many multi-national missionary teams and strongly believes in the power of spiritual multiplication, as well as the importance of developing self-sustaining ministries. His next goal is to train 33 teams to plant churches in various cities in the Arab world. Dick hopes that God will enable his teams to accomplish this, and then he hopes that another 400 teams will be sent to preach the gospel to every unreached people group in the Arab world. “Then I can die happy,” he says.
Through God’s grace, Dick and Jennifer have been blessed to see their ministry in one African nation multiply seven times, after they faithfully raised and equipped leaders to run home churches. These churches currently feed several hundred believers and are now ministering to third generation Christians. Through the use of spiritual multiplication to create self-sustaining ministries, the believers in that country are now equipped and enabled to continue to reach their country with the gospel through their international church, international school, ladies’ community centre, indigenous development agency, as well as several English centres and cooperative training networks.
Dick and Jennifer Brogden’s passion in ministry is to bring the gospel to the Arab world by church planting in those nations. The Brogdens have lived and ministered among Muslims for the last 19 years in three African nations. Dick and Jennifer have two boys, Luke and Zack, both of whom were born and raised in Africa. They currently lead a church planting team that will equip team leaders to plant churches throughout the Arab-Muslim world.
Since university, Dick has dreamed of God using his life to bring one million Muslims to saving faith in Jesus Christ; he humbly acknowledges, however, “I may never lead many, but if I can influence some who will influence others and be a catalyst for ministry in the M*slim world, I would love to see that happen. I want to live a life to make much of God.”
Dick ministers alongside many multi-national missionary teams and strongly believes in the power of spiritual multiplication, as well as the importance of developing self-sustaining ministries. His next goal is to train 33 teams to plant churches in various cities in the Arab world. Dick hopes that God will enable his teams to accomplish this, and then he hopes that another 400 teams will be sent to preach the gospel to every unreached people group in the Arab world. “Then I can die happy,” he says.
Through God’s grace, Dick and Jennifer have been blessed to see their ministry in one African nation multiply seven times, after they faithfully raised and equipped leaders to run home churches. These churches currently feed several hundred believers and are now ministering to third generation Christians. Through the use of spiritual multiplication to create self-sustaining ministries, the believers in that country are now equipped and enabled to continue to reach their country with the gospel through their international church, international school, ladies’ community centre, indigenous development agency, as well as several English centres and cooperative training networks.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 6, 2018
The first time I heard veteran missionary Dick Brogden preach was in August 2014 at the Centennial Celebration of the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri. Karl Adams once quipped that Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans dropped a “bombshell on the playground of the theologians.” After hearing Brogden’s sermon, I commented on social media that he had just dropped a bombshell on the playground of comfortable Pentecostals.
That sermon — “Abide, Apostle, Abandon” — is included in This Gospel (pages 85–94). “We’ve probably all heard about what has happened in Iraq,” Brogden began. “Children butchered, women raped, men forced to convert to false religion, villages attacked, fear spread throughout the region, heads cut off and displayed to intimidate any who dare resist.”
Most thought, reasonably enough, that he was talking about the depredations that ISIS was committing at that very time. But Brogden was talking about “the Assyrians in the time of Jonah, 2,500 years ago.” The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. “To me,” he went on, “the miracle of Jonah is not that the sea calmed when Jonah was thrown in or that the fish swallowed Jonah in order to save him.” Rather, “the great miracle is that the intimidating, bloodthirsty, disobedient, false-religion-spouting city of Nineveh repented!” If God could do that then, He can do that now as well. “All He needs are a few Jonahs.”
Modern-day Jonahs, Brogden explained, will be characterized by three traits: First, they will abide (John 15:5) “We must return to and maintain the simplicity of just having Jesus.” Second, they will apostle, that is, “advance together in planting the church where it does not exist” (Romans 15:20). And third, they will abandon. “We must embrace suffering for Jesus’ sake as part of our normal reality” (Acts 9:16).
Summarized this way, Brogden’s points may not strike you as all that bombshellish. But it seemed to me when I first heard this message, and it still seems to me as I reread it, that his points are indeed explosive, for they confront the comfortableness of American Christianity.
Take abide. Jesus said, “If you remain [i.e., abide] in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Here, abiding and fruitfulness are sequential. Do the one, and the other will result. But how often do we rest our hopes for fruitfulness in ministry on our wealth, education methods, programs, worship styles and whatnot rather than on spending “extravagant time with Jesus”? This challenges the depth of American Christian spiritual discipline.
Or consider apostle. “Missions is not even strictly an issue of lostness,” Brogden writes, “for there are lost people everywhere in the world.” Instead, he goes on, missions is “an issue of access. Missions means that we take the gospel where it has not gone.” The problem, though, is that today, there are too few missionaries in those regions of the world that have the least access to the gospel. This challenges the distribution of American Christian missionary resources.
Then, abandon. The idea of embracing suffering as normal challenges the American Christian expectation of prosperity at its core. So much so that Brogden builds a biblical case for the notion that Christians will suffer as they take the gospel around the world, drawing especially on the example of the apostle Paul, whose missionary commission included the promise of suffering (Acts 9:11–16). Of course, Paul was to simply follow Christ, so, Brogden asks: “Christ loved us enough to die for us. Do we love Christ enough to die for Him? If the price of world evangelization is our own discomfort and demise, will we not willingly and joyfully pay it?” That strikes at the core of our desires, does it not?
“Abide, Apostle, Abandon” is one of 25 “missions sermons” included in This Gospel. The others expand on these themes or introduce new ones. I’ve selected the Centennial sermon because it captures the core of Brogden’s convictions as a missionary, as well as the central practices of the Live Dead movement, in which he is a leader.
A final, personal note. Dick Brogden is a friend. His messages are earnest and to the point. What words on a page don’t capture, however, is the spirit of joyfulness that Dick exudes personally. That’s something to keep in mind as you read these sermons, which challenge but also inspire.
Book Reviewed
Dick Brogden, This Gospel: A Collection of Missions Sermons (Springfield, MO: Live Dead Publishing, 2018).
That sermon — “Abide, Apostle, Abandon” — is included in This Gospel (pages 85–94). “We’ve probably all heard about what has happened in Iraq,” Brogden began. “Children butchered, women raped, men forced to convert to false religion, villages attacked, fear spread throughout the region, heads cut off and displayed to intimidate any who dare resist.”
Most thought, reasonably enough, that he was talking about the depredations that ISIS was committing at that very time. But Brogden was talking about “the Assyrians in the time of Jonah, 2,500 years ago.” The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. “To me,” he went on, “the miracle of Jonah is not that the sea calmed when Jonah was thrown in or that the fish swallowed Jonah in order to save him.” Rather, “the great miracle is that the intimidating, bloodthirsty, disobedient, false-religion-spouting city of Nineveh repented!” If God could do that then, He can do that now as well. “All He needs are a few Jonahs.”
Modern-day Jonahs, Brogden explained, will be characterized by three traits: First, they will abide (John 15:5) “We must return to and maintain the simplicity of just having Jesus.” Second, they will apostle, that is, “advance together in planting the church where it does not exist” (Romans 15:20). And third, they will abandon. “We must embrace suffering for Jesus’ sake as part of our normal reality” (Acts 9:16).
Summarized this way, Brogden’s points may not strike you as all that bombshellish. But it seemed to me when I first heard this message, and it still seems to me as I reread it, that his points are indeed explosive, for they confront the comfortableness of American Christianity.
Take abide. Jesus said, “If you remain [i.e., abide] in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Here, abiding and fruitfulness are sequential. Do the one, and the other will result. But how often do we rest our hopes for fruitfulness in ministry on our wealth, education methods, programs, worship styles and whatnot rather than on spending “extravagant time with Jesus”? This challenges the depth of American Christian spiritual discipline.
Or consider apostle. “Missions is not even strictly an issue of lostness,” Brogden writes, “for there are lost people everywhere in the world.” Instead, he goes on, missions is “an issue of access. Missions means that we take the gospel where it has not gone.” The problem, though, is that today, there are too few missionaries in those regions of the world that have the least access to the gospel. This challenges the distribution of American Christian missionary resources.
Then, abandon. The idea of embracing suffering as normal challenges the American Christian expectation of prosperity at its core. So much so that Brogden builds a biblical case for the notion that Christians will suffer as they take the gospel around the world, drawing especially on the example of the apostle Paul, whose missionary commission included the promise of suffering (Acts 9:11–16). Of course, Paul was to simply follow Christ, so, Brogden asks: “Christ loved us enough to die for us. Do we love Christ enough to die for Him? If the price of world evangelization is our own discomfort and demise, will we not willingly and joyfully pay it?” That strikes at the core of our desires, does it not?
“Abide, Apostle, Abandon” is one of 25 “missions sermons” included in This Gospel. The others expand on these themes or introduce new ones. I’ve selected the Centennial sermon because it captures the core of Brogden’s convictions as a missionary, as well as the central practices of the Live Dead movement, in which he is a leader.
A final, personal note. Dick Brogden is a friend. His messages are earnest and to the point. What words on a page don’t capture, however, is the spirit of joyfulness that Dick exudes personally. That’s something to keep in mind as you read these sermons, which challenge but also inspire.
Book Reviewed
Dick Brogden, This Gospel: A Collection of Missions Sermons (Springfield, MO: Live Dead Publishing, 2018).
July 11, 2025
Best book I've read all year.
March 5, 2021
1000% recommend.
"We are all in this together, and we are foot soldiers together under the Lord of Hosts. Please do not forget that. And war rages on in heaven, and we will overcome by the blood of the lamb...and we will overcome by the word of our testimonies...and we will overcome by not loving our lives unto death."
Dick Brogden
"We are all in this together, and we are foot soldiers together under the Lord of Hosts. Please do not forget that. And war rages on in heaven, and we will overcome by the blood of the lamb...and we will overcome by the word of our testimonies...and we will overcome by not loving our lives unto death."
Dick Brogden
March 29, 2021
This book is incredible. Pick it up and allow yourself to be challenged and changed.
June 1, 2023
“The time will soon end in which the African Christian dies and the American Christian reads about it as he sits in his lazy boy...“ -Overcome, DB
These sermons are a beautiful, painful, heavy, call to take the gospel to all the world.
These sermons are a beautiful, painful, heavy, call to take the gospel to all the world.
September 25, 2020
Just wow. A fantastic journey with the author. Great insights into his world, his inspiration and courage and conviction to walk out a life completely sold out winning the lost - especially those that are hardest to reach. And while his call to follow is strong, there is respect for the idea that while everyone is called to live This Gospel message, we are not all called to walk the same path. This book is a hard read - in the best possible sense of that. Thanks to the author for taking me places in my head and heart that I needed to go...
January 9, 2021
I read this book as a part of my daily abiding time and it shook me many times on what it means to lay down your life to follow Jesus. I’d highly recommend it!
November 14, 2021
This book will wreck you. Be prepared to be challenged to your core. However, if you are willing to engage in a gut-wrenching, challenging, process of inquiry to break away any remaining fears of saying yes to whatever God asks of you, this is the book. You have been warned. You will be changed by this book. Now go get a copy, dig in, and let's do this.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews