The Season of Evangelism Begins! – Portsmouth Evangelism
Christmas provides wonderful opportunities to share the good news. When we walk through busy city centres, it isn’t uncommon to hear carols playing over the loudspeakers; without realising it, people are being exposed to the Lordship of Jesus. Truly, this season makes it much easier for us to share the real meaning of Christmas.
As we set up for the outreach, people began to stop. Within minutes, two New Testaments and one John’s Gospel were taken by those wanting to discover more about Jesus.
While the team members handed out tracts, I commenced the preaching by speaking on “Christmas Signs.” In this talk, I use the prophecies of Isaiah to show who Jesus is and why we celebrate Christmas. As I spoke, a few people sat on the benches to listen. At the end of the message, three people responded by taking copies of John’s Gospel.
The cold weather made it challenging for longer conversations, but people were very willing to take tracts. Throughout the outreach, between the six of us, we were able to give away several hundred gospel leaflets.
The weather wasn’t the only challenge we faced today. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks about so-called apostles whose actions hindered the work of the gospel. Today, we had a self-professed ‘apostle’ come by the outreach. We’ve met him before, but this time he wanted us to give him some of our resources from the Bible table (we refused). He then decided to set up an amplifier and video camera near where we were sharing the gospel. Even though we were preaching and witnessing, he began to preach over us. His tone was aggressive, and his message was unclear. Immediately, his actions made people much more hostile to the gospel. His conduct disrupted the outreach (For further information on Apostles, please click here).
Yet, despite the actions of this self-proclaimed ‘apostle’, the gospel wasn’t silenced. During this time, I preached using the lyrics of different Christmas carols to explain the gospel. As I did this, a young man stopped and began to engage. We went back and forth about the gospel and the need for Jesus. In the end, the young man took a copy of John’s Gospel. Afterward, Roger was about to have a jolly good chat with him.
As the outreach ended, team members were able to have a great conversation with a Roman Catholic lady. She was intrigued by the gospel of grace and took much literature.
This is just the start of the season of evangelism; I look forward to seeing what the Lord does next!
SDG!
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Josh Williamson is a full-time evangelist with The Open-Air Mission. Since 1853, OAM has been sharing the good news on the streets of the United Kingdom. To stay updated about the work of the Mission, please sign up for the free quarterly magazine and monthly prayer notes.
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In common with many evangelistic reports, we have changed the names and some of the photographs to protect the anonymity of those mentioned.