Worth the Wait

How can I describe it to you? Friday night was basically an answer to one of my longest held prayers; it was the gracious gift of God after years and years of hoping and waiting. For what you ask? To see this happen: A group of about 22 Christian brothers and sisters (half local, half from out-of-town) and I gathered in a home to pray and then we went out on the streets of my city downtown. In small groups or pairs we headed out for witnessing conversations with people hanging out by the clubs, cafes, fast food restaurants and the movie theater. One very exciting thing about this outreach was that about half the people in our group had no previous experience in evangelism to people you “don’t already know”.

It was great to hit the same city blocks I have previously tread alone, but this time with so many young brothers and sisters. It was very exciting watching these young college students give out their first gospel tract, and share the gospel with someone on the street for the first time. Their nervousness turned to encouragement and joy when they realized they were speaking with a guy, or a couple, or even whole group of friends, who actually wanted to hear it. I am very sure one of the young men may end up a street preacher. This brother was quite filled with the Holy Spirit. I thank God He let me live to see a large group of English-speaking saints at last go out on the streets of my city to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost, and to sow the written Word of God. I’m so glad I got to see some young believers give it a go for the first time-right in my city. It was awesome to see their compassion for people, their love for Christ, and their zeal to make Him known. It was wonderful to hear them witnessing and sharing the gospel on the street for the first time. I hope it happens again soon! All thanks, praise, glory and honor to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Book Table at the Festival

Friends witnessing to folks at the Arabic Cultural Festival at Union Square in San Francisco. One brother has a membership with the hosting cultural organization and thus was able to procure a booth at the festival. Another brother brought a dozen boxes of Bibles and Christian literature that he purchased himself. Believers from various cities manned the table and spent the day talking with all kinds of people and giving out tracts, gospels, Bibles, DVDs and children’s gospel literature. People were interested to find out that most of the materials were in the Arabic language. People from all over the world received the Scriptures and heard about the Gospel for the first time.

SF Outreach ’10

Tamara (on R) witnessing at Civic Center

I’m thankful I could go out this year for the annual SOS outreach in SF and Berkeley, (July 16-24) to work with other believers, bringing the gospel to the lost sheep. I did not get many pictures of the people on our team this year though. I mostly took pictures of some of the people we shared the gospel with– they (the people) are all so beautiful and I wait with joyful anticipation to someday know what shall become of the seeds that were sown. Let me know if this link does not work; I’ll post more pics.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=257288&id=561034376&l=bccca166e4

Street church: After the Bibles were given out, the conversations ended and the gospel proclaiming was done, worship with song and music finished the outreach. These two were walking by, stopped, sat on their suitcases and joined with us. Praising the Lord with reverence and joy!

Go, Stand, Speak

It’s Summer! More time for street preaching! Jeremiah Cry ministries is having an evangelism conference called, “Go, Stand, Speak: The Forgotten Power of the Public Proclamation of the Gospel”. This will be held August 6-8 in Brooklyn, New York. Here is all the info: http://www.jeremiahcry.com/index.php

Sermon on the Mount Saturday

A Project Ezra Event. Give open air Bible reading a try this weekend!
Matthew chapters 5-7.

“Reading the Sermon on the Mount in the open air during Memorial Day weekend. Invite some friends to share the reading with you, then find a public area in your town or city with good foot traffic, climb up on a box, bench, or ladder, and read God’s word. Then share a brief gospel presentation.”

“…devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.” (1 Tim 4:13)

Facebook Page here.

The Action is on the Front Lines

Here is a mini- report from our week long street evangelism outreach here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was an action packed week as about 30 believers worked together for 9 days to publicly preach the Gospel, read the Bible out loud in public, distribute Gospel literature and speak to people one on one about the Good News.

As Barry proclaimed the Word of God out loud, Jessi and I prayed and listened for who was responding. This man made a comment as we passed by. Soon we were engaged in a conversation with this man who was steeped in New Age doctrine, yet open to hearing the Truth of the Bible. The Word of God came against the spiritual strongholds as Hope and Truth were poured out to him.

This was the scene seconds before a big angry man came and shut us down. Frank was humbly, lovingly and boldly preaching the Gospel when a man reacted spiritually to the Word of God and flew into a rage of hate against the Lord and His people. God let us experience, live and in color, Matt.10:16 & 22 as the man screamed out every curse he could think of against us. I was encouraged by Frank’s loving and humble response. This event was a gift from the Lord; He was teaching us to be sheep before the shearers and lambs among wolves, as He poured out strength and courage to us by His Spirit.

Elieso said he had never read the Bible or heard the Gospel. When we handed him this Bible, he stood there reading it for half an hour while the preaching continued.

Denis was visiting from Brazil. Though his first language is Portuguese, we were able to have a good conversation in English. He was drawn to come over when he heard the band play a worship song he recognized. He had a “church tradition” background, but never heard the Gospel. He very much desired to hear the entire Gospel and said he would read the Bible in his language when he got home.

Lindsay was doing a video interview for her high school Art class when I met her in Berkeley. In God’s providence, all her interview questions about “Art” could be answered with testimony about God the Creator, Who created everything that humans portray when we make our own “art”. She asked me what my favorite kind of art is and I answered poetry because I like creatively arranged words. So I was able to share the Gospel with her (and her class) right on videotape concerning the Word Who became flesh and dwelt among us. I spoke of how God revealed Himself to us through Creation, through the Scriptures, and in Jesus. I gave her a copy of the Gospel in poetry form. A few days later I bumped into her again and was able to get this picture with her.

Witnessing on the bus! We began our conversation at the bus stop and continued on the long bus ride. She went home from work with the Gospel in her backpack.

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These sweet girls were out witnessing with their church! Jessi and I let them practice on us, then we had a mini discipleship session while helping them discern and know the difference between the
true Gospel message, and the clichés that are commonly used in modern evangelism.

Sky preached and witnessed to many people.

At the park, there was a dozen guys from several Central and South American countries sitting on the grass. I sat down with them and just started a conversation, at first in my limited Spanish. Finding out there were at least half of them who understood English, I just started talking with them about God, my testimony, and the Gospel. The amazing thing is that there were about two of them who were really listening intently and asking questions. They received Gospel tracts and Bibles in their language. Right when I was finished speaking of Christ to them, another group of men came and invited them to a game of soccer. One stayed behind to read his Spanish Gospel tract.

If you are preaching the Gospel, witnessing, distributing the Word of God, teaching others the Bible, discipling others to follow Jesus or training believers to do any of these things, you are on the front lines. This is where the action is. This is where things are happening in the supernatural realm. This is where God is working in the lives of people, through His Word, by His Spirit. Don’t just hang back in the pews; get in on the action!

Risk-Taking Adventure!

Reading God's Word out loud in public in San Francisco amidst listeners and hecklers

(Desiring that )…” your life and ministry would have a radical flavor, a risktaking flavor, a gutsy, countercultural wartime flavor that makes average American people in your church uncomfortable! …A strange mixture of tenderness and toughness that keeps people a little bit off balance… a pervasive summons to something… hazardous, a saltiness, a brightness… like Jesus. Salt and light…a joyful embrace of suffering…”

~John Piper

Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Hence, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. Hebrews 13:12-13.

Audio: How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice, from the T4G conference.

A Street Meeting

That’s what Paul Kaiser calls an evangelism outreach involving one on one witnessing and “high visibility” open air Gospel preaching. About seventeen saints gathered in Old Sacramento on Saturday night for several hours of proclaiming the biblical Gospel to the lost.

Young men listening to Christ being exalted

While the brothers took turns preaching, there were many opportunities to talk to people. Some folks identified themselves as fellow saints and we had some good fellowship-encouragement right there on the sidewalk. I was amazed at how many people actually stood and listened almost the entire time; men, women, children, teens. One man played the part of the classic heckler: scoffing, then expressing skepticism with questions he thought had no answers. The man was respectfully yet boldly answered with classic apologetics as well as presuppositional Bible Truth. We watched him go from mocker to quiet after he read for himself the Bible text and heard preached the truth of God’s creation, the character, glory and holiness of God, the Law of God, the rebellion and wickedness of sin, the wages of sin being death, and the grace and mercy of God in Christ.

I saw a woman standing up against the building wall and came up and stood by her. She was listening intently to the preaching with great emotion on her face. After a while I started talking to her and after going through the Gospel with her I asked her if she has ever heard this message before. She said she had never heard it. She was agreeing about sin and saying she needed Jesus and forgiveness. She then confided in me that she just had a big fight with her husband and shared some painful details. We talked more about the Truth of sin and redemption and she gladly took a NT Bible which she had never read. Then her husband came to get her and I thought he would say, “Let’s go” and take her away, but he said something hurtful to her and then turned around. He looked at the man preaching, and he stood there perfectly still next to his wife for at least an hour, listening to the preaching, not saying a word.