Open Air Ideas

I loved the theory of open air preaching espoused in this previous post.  But I've since gone onto Youtube to see the exponents at work.  To be honest, I haven't seen them living up to their ideals.  Who does eh?

But in the interests of throwing some ideas out there that might spark someone's imagination, here's something that some friends and I tried a couple of years ago.  Perhaps you can improve on it and let me know...

We were the "Not Guilty" crew.  Our verse was John 3:18 "Whoever believes is not condemned."  We had "Not guilty" tracts based on John's Gospel, a Not Guilty banner and a Not Guilty website to direct people to.

Two years running, we set up shop near Oxford Circus and for 3 nights in August we spoke, acted, mimed and sang of Jesus.

There were between 10 and 20 of us in the team depending on the night.

We met for a few weeks beforehand. We prayed and prepared our "entertainment."  This involved four different segments: Songs, Testimonies, Dramas and Preaching.  We had about four of each - simple songs, simple testimonies, simple dramas and preaching that jumped off from where the drama finished.  On the night we just cycled through one of each and kept things moving.

Can you believe we secured the services of GoldenMouth Dev Menon?  Not only did he preach up a storm, but put his dramatic skills to good use.  Who could forget Dev stuck to a chair in the "Do not touch" sketch!?

While we kept these moving, our team were forming a crowd, ready whenever a segment finished to turn to their neighbour and ask "What did you make of that?"

We gave out hundreds of tracts, scores of John's Gospels and got into dozens and dozens of conversations every night.  And if the unbeliever wasn't sufficiently compelled by our words, we brought in Emma to give them the laser-eyes.

One more thing to say about open-air evangelism.  It's not everyone's bag.  That's ok.  But it should probably be a lot more people's bag than it currently is in the church.

I've been doing it for 12 years now.  On every occasion that I've gone out, God has always given me at least one significant gospel conversation.  Every single time!  Whether I've spoken to people at a bus station, or on park benches or gone door-knocking or street-preaching, the Lord has always led me to at least one unbeliever with whom I've been able to have a decent talk about Jesus, life, death, eternity, that kind of thing.

To my shame there have been many Sundays where I've failed to speak significantly of Christ to other church folk.  But in all the times I've prayed and then hit the streets, I've always found someone to gospel.

Every time I think about that I'm stunned.  But then maybe I shouldn't be:

God determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  (Acts 17:26-27)