Gospel Preaching in the Rain – Reading Evangelism
Only the Word of God is infallible and inerrant – man’s word changes and is not accurate, especially when it comes to predicting the weather! According to my three weather apps, there would be no rain in Reading, and it'd be mild in temperature. But the truth was completely different – it was wet, windy, and cold. I must admit, this made me question how we could best engage in evangelism when no one really wanted to be out in such conditions, but we decided to set up the open-air board so at least people could read a Bible verse while we handed out tracts.
After handing out tracts for a while, we noticed the weather changed. The rain stopped, so we had an opportunity to preach and set up the free literature table.
The preaching commenced when I spoke about God and man being separated by sin. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would want to stop in this weather, but surprisingly a few did, with two taking copies of John’s Gospel at the end.
As I looked around the town centre, I could see team members handing out leaflets and chatting to people about the good news. Over at the Bible table, Trevor was chatting with several people. It is always encouraging to see so many people being told about the Lord Jesus.
Bill preached next, and he did a great job. Over the past few months, I have watched him develop as a preacher. I’m excited to see how the Lord uses him in the future. We also had a guest preacher today all the way from Michigan. Tripp, an evangelist from the USA, is in the UK for a week, so he came along to the outreach. He did a great job of using the Good Person Test to explain the gospel to the people of Reading.
The outreach concluded after I preached once more; this time I spoke on “The Way to Heaven.” A couple of people listened, and one went to the Bible table for information. A Christian who listened was encouraged by the message, so I urged him to consider being more active in public evangelism.
I went home from Reading wet and cold, but at the same time, thankful for all the Lord did. Please pray for all those who heard the good news.
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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