I heard a sermon recently while visiting Stillwater, Oklahoma where the Pastor presented a message on the four R’s of salvation. These are:
Recognition of sin
Remorse for sin
Repentance of sin
Receive Jesus Christ
While witnessing to people, I have been able to review the four R’s with them. With one woman that I was speaking to at the West End DART station, I told her about the four R’s and took her through them. She said she recognized her sin and was even remorseful. But she had not repented of her sin or received Jesus Christ. She took a tract and a Bible before she got on the train.
You can listen to the sermon online. I believe that you will be blessed by the 33 minutes that it will take to listen.
I’ve had the chance to listen to the sermon online a couple of times since I first heard it live. I have also had several friends listen to it and we have had a number of discussions about it. I think there is a fifth R that we can add as well. That is “reason”.
We see this both in the Old Testaments in the book of Isaiah when it comes to recognizing sin:
“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:8)
We also see Paul talking about reasoning from the scriptures about why Jesus had to suffer and rise:
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” (Acts 17:2-3)
I don’t write this to take anything away from what Dr David Chapman says in the 4 R’s sermon. Rather, I add this so that we know it is also reasonable to reason with people about their sin, the scriptures, Jesus, Heaven and Hell. Do it “as you go” and share the Gospel with everyone that you meet!
This week we did two outreaches at the State Fair of Texas. On Friday, Wally, Duane and I rode the DART to Dallas. After some lunch and fellowship, we took the DART to the station at Fair Park. There we handed out a few thousand tracts, did a little open air preaching and shared the Gospel one on one with a number of people who were waiting for trains. For use outside of the fair grounds, we made two tracts that were specific to the fair. The first was a “fried food” trivia tract. The second was a bookmark featuring the Texas Star facts and the Gospel on the back. These tracts were well received at the fair park DART station.
On Saturday, we used the State Fair Gospel booth inside of the fair grounds for an outreach. We had over 20 people come to help with the outreach! At first glance it might seem that 20 people is too many to man this booth, but it actually gave us the opportunity to rotate people and give many people a chance to witness at the fair.
As each portion of our group arrived, they received five to ten minutes of training from Rex Whitton who heads up this outreach. Then we were “on the job”. The booth features a big sign that says “Million Dollar Eye Test”. This attracts peoples curiosity and they come over just to see what we are up to.
The Million Dollar Eye test is basically used to diagnose someone spiritual condition. We first ask if they would trade one of their eyes for a million dollars. We would explain that we can do a simple, painless procedure to remove their eye and replace it with a glass eye. The glass eye would “look” the same, it just would not “look” the same! We use million dollar bill tracts to make the point that it is a lot of money. Most people said no to this question. Although some would say yes!
We then follow with a second question to ask if they would trade both of their eyes for one trillion dollars. Again we had tracts to show how many zeros there are. We would also point out that a trillion one dollar bills laid end to end would reach from the earth to the sun. Nearly everyone would say no to this question. Although surprisingly a couple said yes, saying that they would use some of the money to buy new eyes!
The whole point of these two questions was to get each person to recognize that if there is a high value on their eyes than there must be an even higher value on their soul. So we’d just ask “if you would not trade your eyes for a trillion dollars, what must your soul be worth?”
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:26)
This lead to the ultimate “million dollar question”: Where will you spend eternity?
From here we were able to share the Law and Gospel with people. We had a number of amazing conversations. Everyone who was with us was pretty much constantly involved in as much and as many conversations as they wanted to be. We had some good opportunities to discuss the conversations and provide the team members with some “in the field” training on sharing the Gospel.
We were blessed to have so many people join us. We are thanking to have access to the booth at the state fair to witness to the people attending the fair. We will be praying about how to participate in the State Fair Outreach again next year.
Fair’s seem to be good opportunities to share the Gospel. The Texas State Fair is one of the (if not the) largest fairs in the country. Your town might have a city fair or a county fair where you could rent a booth and set up to share the Gospel. We know some people who witness at “trade days” each month in McKinney. Keep your eye open in your town to see what opportunities there are. There might be a small fee to reserve a booth. However, what we found is that once inside the fair grounds we were able to have many good one on one conversations to share the Gospel and also hand out Gospel tracts.
If you have some experience sharing the Gospel at a booth at your local fair, please post a comment and share your experiences.
The Texas Rangers made it back to the World Series for the second consecutive time. I missed the outreaches at last years World Series due to being out of town. This year we made it out to games 4 and 5.
The game 4 outreach started about an hour before the first pitch. We
Todd, Carl, Duane and Tom
parked about a mile away and then took a cab to the stadium (to save time walking). This gave us the opportunity to share the Gospel with the cab driver!
When we reached the stadium, we set up at the exact spot with the Arlington Police and Rangers Security had told us to go last time we were out there. Nonetheless, as I handed out the first tract, we were immediately told by Rangers Security that we could not do that because we were on Rangers property. I explained that we were on a public sidewalk and had clearance from the head of Rangers Security, Arlington PD and a letter from our attorney. We stayed within six feet of the street like we had been instructed before. It took a little time to work everything out with APD and the Security, but ultimately we were allowed to preach with the amplifier and distribute Gospel tracts.
For Game 5, we proceeded to the opposite corner of the stadium from
Carl, Wally, Duane and Tom
where we were for Game 4. We had already evangelized the other three corners of the ballpark on various other occassions throughout the season. We arrived about three hours before first pitch and there was already a solid flow of traffic. After handing out tracts for 10 or 20 minutes, I went up to one of the police officers that was working traffic for that corner and asked where the best place to stand to preach would be. We agreed on a spot and we set up and started preaching the Gospel in the open air. We pretty much had someone preaching the Gospel for three straight hours while the other three of us handed out Gospel tracts. We took turns preaching.
We were met with some jeers. But also some Christians provided some encouragement. One of those was the senior pastor of a large church in the area!
If you want to do an outreach at your local sporting event, it is good to know something about the public property around the stadium. Each location has some different rules and restrictions. Some places require a permit for amplification, some don’t. Some college campuses may have some requirements for permits to be on campus. The best thing is to check out the venue where you want to go. By doing some legwork in advance you can have a successful outreach while working with the law enforcement.
As one example of that, at Game 5, the office asked us to not block her view of the other officer as they were working the traffic. So by merely staying to one side or the other, they were able to fulfill their duties and we were able to share the Gospel.
There are more pictures from the outreaches online for game 4 and game 5.
For a long time now I have been talking with a couple of friends about doing an open air funeral. We thought this would be a good way to show people that death is real. Ten out of ten die. We had talked about buying a mannequin in order to do the open air funeral. However, the cheapest ones we could find were still $100 or more. So instead, we bought a white sheet at Wal-Mart for $5 and used an old sweat shirt as a pillow on the ground. My friend Duane agreed to be the “dead” body. We talked about it for a couple of days before hand and he gave me scripture to read and a couple of facts to point out about his life. With that, we layed out the sheet on the ground, he laid down, and I preached.
There is one guy who got upset and called the police as he rode away on the train. So you hear me dialog with him briefly at the beginning of the video.
A number of people clapped at the end. Several people came over and encouraged us to keep up what we are doing. Many people heard the Gospel. And the visual was very impactful for people walking buy. We will definitely be working on developing this as we go out preaching the Gospel.
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Are you interested fulfilling the great commission, but feel unprepared? Are you involved in Evangelism, but would like to learn more? Have you been to our Basic Evangelism Training Seminar but would still like to learn more?
The School of Biblical Evangelism text book offers 101 lessons in evangelism. It can be a bit of a daunting task to cover this material on your own. Going through the material with a small group of people in your area is ideal. But, sometimes it is not possible, to find others that are close to you that are able to go through the material with you.
We have a group that will be starting through this material with the goal to cover one lesson a week. This is a journey that will last for approximately two years. Those of us that are here in North Dallas will meet at noon on Tuesday’s at Stonebriar Mall in Frisco to discuss the material and evangelize at the mall. We will discuss lesson 1 on Tuesday, November 1st.
If you are not local to the area but would still like some encouragement and accountability to cover the material, we will also be hosting a discussion of the material on our Yahoo! group bezeugen-sobe. You can subscribe to the group with the form below. Each week we will send a reminder of what lesson we are on and encourage online discussion of the material.
One of the friends of Bezeugen Ministries has purchased a number of Evangelism resources and needs to sell some of them off. These resources are all brand new, sealed in the box. If you are interested please contact me at 80-BEZEUGEN or by email and I will put you in contact with the seller. All items are located in Dallas, TX. If you live locally then we can arrange for you to pick them up. Otherwise shipping charges will apply.
Way of the Master Basic Training – This is the 8 session DVD training from Living Waters. if you want to train you church, or even for personal study, this is a great resource. Sells new for $99. Asking $65 plus shipping. They also have a number of the individual study guides available. These sell new for $5.99 each. Asking $2.99 each plus shipping!
Way of the Master Basic Training (Spanish) – This is the 8 session DVD training from Living Waters in Spanish. These sell new for $59.99 (on sale at Living Waters for $49.99) and asking $35 a copy plus shipping.
Way of the Master Intermediate Training – This is the 8 session DVD training from Living Waters. Again, this is great for personal, small group study or training at your church. These sell new for $99 (on sale at Living waters for $79) and asking $65 plus shipping.
Evidence Bible – This is a great study resource. I have one and I use it all the time. It is a study Bible where all of the notes and references are about sharing the Gospel. Sells new for $39.99 (on sale at Living Waters for $27.99) and asking $23 per copy plus shipping.
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On Tuesday’s I meet Wally at Stonebriar Mall in Frisco. We have lunch and then do some witnessing. We always have some good conversations with people and get to share the Gospel. Sometimes other friends will join us. Sometimes it is just the two of us. Yesterday’s trip was one God ordained appointment after another. When I got out of the car, I felt lead to take a CD (click Can Good Men go to Hell?) that I had recently listened to and a New Testament with a Bible bookmark.
We have been eating lunch at the same “terriyaki Chicken” place for a couple months now. We can split a plate and eat cheap! Turns out they also have a punched card program that we had filled up. So this lunch was going to be FREE! I decided to splurge and go get some sweet tea for us from Chik-fil-a.
At the line at Chik-fil-a there was a young guy there. He was probably in his early 20’s. As we waited, I asked, “got peace” and handed him a got peace tract. I said “that’s great, where did you get it?”
He said, “from Jesus.”
Great! So few people give this answer. So I asked “how did you become a Christian.” He then explained that he was Catholic and came from West Texas and his whole family is Catholic. So I asked him “why do you call yourself Catholic? What do you think is the difference between Catholic and Christian?” He gave the question some thought and then said, “you know, to be completely honest, I am not really sure.”
At that, I was up to the register. I told my new friend that I’d like to buy his lunch and asked him what he wanted. He got a little uncomfortable at that as I asked again and I told him that I really wanted to buy his lunch. I placed the order for my two cups of sweet tea and told the guy at the register that I was buying his lunch also. My new friend said no. But the guy at the register had heard our conversation so far and he said, “I am unable to complete this transaction until I have your order”. “I’ll have a number 4”, my new friend said. The cashier turned out to be the general manager of the store. As I handed him the money for the bill, he reduced the bill by the amount of the number 4 and then by the amount of the two sweet tea’s and then said “it’s on the house.” At that, my new friend was totally blown away. I could see it in his eyes. And he said “that was really impactful to me”. I explained that Jesus said it is better to give than receive. I asked if he had time to sit with Wally and I to eat lunch. He declined saying he was in a hurry to get back to work. I knew which kiosk he worked at, so I figured I could follow up. I explained the Gospel to him and then offered him a CD which he took and said he would listen to.
As Wally and I ate lunch, I suggested that we go to the Apple Store and ask people about Steve Jobs’ death. As we walked there, we stopped at a kiosk where there was an iPad on display. So after a quick discussion about the guys product we asked what he thought happened to Steve Jobs. Had an interesting discussion with him about eternity. He believes in native Indian religion and returning to the dust. But he saw no problem with the fact that is in contradiction to Steve Jobs’ belief in Buddhism or in the judgment described in the Bible. We gave him a tract and went into the Apple Store.
In the Apple Store we were looking around at the iPads. I flipped one of them on to the video camera and made this recording of Wally sharing the Gospel! And then posted it to YouTube right from the store!
Afterward we talked with one of the store employees. But he was fairly standoffish when we started talking about Steve Jobs. So we left there and continued down the mall. Incidentally, without even sharing the video on Facebook or Twitter, a few hours later, I had a comment in my inbox about the video. So I know it was watched!
As you may know, the Texas Rangers are in the ALCS. Carrying Rangers Trivia tracts makes them extremely easy to hand out. You might consider making some trivia tracts for your local team to hand out around town during the season. I gave one to an employee at the chocolate store and suggested she quiz her boyfriend.
We were walking down the mall when we realized there were not many people down at this end of the mall. We decided to turn back and check on someone we had talked to last week.
As we turned back we were right by a kiosk and started to talk to the gal that was working it. We asked her about the products and then about her accent. She said she was from Napal and had been in the US for six years. So I asked about religion in Napa. She said it is Hindu. So we had a good discussion about the differences in beliefs between Hindu and Christianity. I asked if she had ever considered what the Bible said. She said no. So I pulled out the New Testament from my pocket along with the Bible Bookmark and took her through the verses and questions on the bookmark. She read each verse from the New Testament and answered each question. She thanked us for taking the time to show her that. I gave her the New Testament and the bookmark. She was very appreciative and said she would read it. WOW! That is the power of God’s word. If you have not tried witnessing using these bookmarks, I encourage you to try it out. Let me know if you need some of them.
We talked to a couple of other people. But let me draw to a close with a two more comments.
First, we ran into our new friend who had received lunch from Chik-fil-a. He came over, shook hands and thanked me again. He said that he was so blown away, that he had never expected anyone to buy his lunch and that he had called his wife to tell her what had happened! We talked for a few more minutes, exchanged contact information and he said he would call me after he listens to the CD.
Second, we did find the guy were were looking for from the previous week. The week before we had had a nice conversation with a gentleman who was walking in the mall and had a booklet about the festivals of the Old Testament. He had given Wally and I each a copy. Then after talking to him we ended up talking to this guy. After talking to him and walking away, he ran down the mall to catch us and asked about the booklet we were carrying. So I gave him the copy that I had received a few minutes earlier. Wally had since read the booklet so he was able to talk with him about it. Wally gave him a Save Yourself Some Pain booklet for him to read next.
As we got to talking the guy told us that he believes in science and that he does not have a soul. I said, “since you don’t believe you have a soul and I am trying to collect souls, can I buy yours for a dollar?” He said yes. I reached in my pocket and pulled out my money, thumbed through to find a single and handed it to him saying, “thanks, now I own your soul.”
I asked him how he came to believe in science. He gave it some thought and then said that he has looked at religion and science and then went with the one that made more sense.
Wally and I then gave him some scientific facts from the Bible. We talked about how science used to think the world was flat, that there were a limited number of stars and how doctors used to wash their hands in standing water. Then we explained that the Bible has always indicated that the earth is round, free floats in space, that there are innumerable stars and how running water is good for life. He was fairly amazed. So we then turned to historical and archaeological information about the Bible. Finally we discussed prophecy and the prophecy of Jesus. I added that math states that the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus in one man is statistically impossible, yet it is recorded as true in the Bible.
He offered to give me my dollar back. I told him it was his to keep. We explained that it is not really possible to sell a soul anyway, but that I wanted him to think about what we had talked about and that he was willing to sell his soul when he spent that dollar. I think that made a big impact on him. We shared the Gospel with him, suggested he read the booklet and then gave him a tract as a summary. I asked him to call us when he read the booklet.
On the way out of the mall we quizzed a guy that had the Texas Rangers emblem tattooed on his wrist from the Rangers Trivia tract. That was interrupted by him getting a customer. They both received tracts and we headed home!
Keep in mind this trip to the mall was geared around sharing the Gospel. However, many of the individual events are things that anyone could do to share the Gospel “as you go” throughout your day. It is for that reason that I have shared this here. Please be encouraged to go and share your faith in Jesus with others. There are people dying and going to Hell. The least we can do is warn them as Jesus commands us to do! For more ways to share the Gospel As You Go please see the As You Go BLOG.
Today was the First Thursday of the month, so I headed down to City Hall for prayer time. I had had a few messages from people that normally come indicating that they might not make it. So I actually thought I might be the only one there praying. Turns out I was right.
That is OK. I still prayed through the verses that we selected for this month and prayed for our Nation, Leaders and Revival in the land. It was a beautiful day. I enjoyed the time with the Lord to lift up our city, state and nation to God!
Would you consider joining us next month? Even if you don’t like in Carrollton, the Pray, Learn, Go is an invitation to all Christians!
The State Fair of Texas is the largest state fair in the country. Annual attendance over the 24 days of the fair is upwards of three million people. On the opening day of the fair, Wally and I met at the train station outside the main entrance and distributed tracts and had one on one conversations for nearly 90 minutes. Part of the objective was to get the lay of the land for a larger outreach with more people the next day.
We designed two tracts specifically for the state fair. As you may know, the State Fair of Texas is known for it’s fried foods. So we made a tract which on the front says “name ten things fried at the fair“. These tracts peaked peoples curiosity. They gladly took them and enjoyed reading the trivia! The other tract is a bookmark with a picture of the Texas Star on it along with facts about the Texas Star. On the back are facts about eternity!
Security from the State Fair did not want us on their property handing these tracts out. But after a quick call to my contact at DART, we verified that we were allowed to be on the DART property that borders the state fair grounds.
On Saturday, I taught a Basic Evangelism Training Seminar in Southlake and then brought the people from the seminar out to evangelize at the DART station. Several of the people that came with us had never even handed out a tract before!
During the two outreaches, approximately 7,000 Gospel tracts were distributed. More pictures from these outreaches are online. We are continuing to hand out the remaining (of 10,000 ordered) around town. Since so many people are going or have been to the fair they are interested in the tracts and go off reading the Gospel message on the back!
