Newquay Evangelism: First Open-Air Outreach for 2022

It is amazing how the Lord in His sovereignty changes our plans. As I drew up my schedule for this week, I had planned to spend time on Tuesday afternoon distributing tracts house to house, but Tim Wood messaged me suggesting we do an open-air outreach instead. Normally, I wouldn’t give much thought to open-air work through the week due to how quiet the town can be, but today we decided to give it a go – I am glad we did!

Tim and his daughter Chelsea arrived at my house at just before 1:30pm, and together we made our way to the town centre of Newquay. Upon arrival, we were met by Martin (a non-Christian) who came along to both services at Newquay Baptist Church on the Lord’s Day. He had come out onto the streets to find us, as he wanted to join the outreach.

The town centre was quiet, but we figured even if we handed out a few tracts it was better than nothing. As I set up the Open-Air Mission board, the team began to hand out tracts. The slower pace of the town meant more people seemed interested in taking literature and observing what we were doing.

Not long into the outreach, we had a man stop who wanted to argue. He fired questions at us like a machine-gun, but he wasn’t interested in answers. He used a variety of coarse words to describe his anti-theism and loudly shouted about how the Bible is wrong. Tim and I tried to reason with him, but it was a waste of time. At one point I offered him my Bible and asked him to back up the claims he was making about the Scripture (such as Christian deny the use of electricity). He refused to touch the Bible, but for the people who stopped to watch this man, it spoke volumes. After he left a number of those who saw what happened readily took tracts, and a few laughed saying that they wouldn’t swear at us.

Soon after this, I managed to have a chat with a man named Noodles. I met him for the first time last year during the Open-Air Mission outreach in Newquay; let's just say the man is ‘interesting.’ He told me that when he dies, he is going to soar off to explore the universe; he also told me that Newquay is actually a part of London and that he will be still living 200 years from now. Noodles has no belief in absolute truth, having swallowed the lie of postmodern thought. I reasoned with him from the Scripture, but he would just say, “No, no, no!” whenever I spoke of Jesus. Noodles heard the gospel again today, and I pleaded with him not to despise God’s grace, nor the day of salvation. But he just laughed and walked away.

During this time, Tim was chatting with a young man named Nick. Nick first walked by when the anti-theist was shouting, as he did so he held up a little Gideon’s New Testament. It was clear that Nick isn’t a Believer, but he is reading the Bible, and he is very interested in the things of God. Tim was able to share the gospel with him, and Nick asked for prayer. Tim assured him that we will be praying for him this evening at our church’s prayer meeting. 

We were only out on the streets for about ninety minutes, but during that time we were able to distribute many tracts and have some good conversations. Plenty of people also read the Scripture posters on the open-air board. But not only did we get to reach out to the lost today, but we also had the opportunity to minister to Christians. A couple of young men walked by who attend a different church in town; they both seemed very encouraged by the gospel work, so they asked to pray for us. Loudly in the town centre of Newquay, they called upon the Lord for His blessing on the gospel work. It is always encouraging to meet fellow Christians and to provoke them to good works.

Please pray for all those we encountered in Newquay today.

SDG!

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