White Sox Outreach

Our experience here was the exact opposite of the Cubs experience.  I had a different set of people who signed up for the White Sox.  There was only 5 people at this outreach but everyone was very enthusiastic about handing out the tracts and people were interested and excited about taking them.  We hit a snag when we first got there.  We went twice last year and no one bothered us but this year a White Sox security guard made us move from our best location by stating that the sidewalk was owned by the White Sox and therefore private property.  I was discouraged but we agreed to move across the street.  It turned out that because of how the foot traffic flowed, this turned out to be much better.  One member of our team as far as I know had never handed out tracts before and he turned out to be the best tract passer that I had ever seen.  It was almost as if he was selling peanuts or something. He engaged a lot of people in conversations about the trivia questions and got them interested in reading the tracts.  There was a police officer standing next to us (I had him stand next to me because I wanted to make sure that he was not going to be too uncomfortable but I turned out to be wrong).  He brought a tract to the police officer and asked him if he knew the answer to the third trivia question.  It was a hard question that I did not think anyone could possibly know but the police officer knew it immediately.  After a friendly conversation with the police officer we had no trouble in our location.

There was another reason that I believe we ended up where we were.  After we were there for a while two men started handing out business cards in front of us.  It turned out that it was a coupon for a strip club.  I was glad that we were there to represent the Lord’s interest and cross swords with the devil’s interest.  If we were not there I felt that their perversion would have gone unchallenged.  Chicago is such a dark city.  I do not think that people who live in other parts of the country realize how dark it really is.

In the end we distributed all 2000 of the tracts we brought and ran out right about the time that the game started.  One of our group brought more tracts that he had purchased and we put them on the cars around the neighborhood after the game started.  We then had a very nice fellowship lunch at an old neighborhood restaurant in the neighborhood where Mayor Daley grew up.

The contrast between the reception we had at the two outreaches really illustrates how the deceitfulness of riches can really choke out the gospel.  The wealthy Cubs fans think that they have all they need (except for a team that can win).  What if I was giving out coupons for free food at the game?  They would not even look at the tract.  The less affluent White Sox fans know that they have needs and were willing to look at what we had to offer.