Bezeugen BLOG

This afternoon we had our second park outreach in partnership with First Baptist Church Hebron. We meet at Oak Hills Park in Carrollton, TX at the corner of Hebron and Rolling Oaks. Between Bezeugen and FBC Hebron we had a bounce house for the kids, sno cones for all, water, and footballs to toss around. We brought plenty of Gospel tracts and Bibles. We had a number of one on one conversations.

The first guy that I talked too said he was a Christadelphian. Not being familiar with this religion, I asked lots of questions to try to understand what he believes. He basically suggested that there is no hell and that only those who “recognize the truth” will be raised from the dead. So there is essentially no eternal punishment. When his son was done bouncing, I gave him a tract and they left.

I spent a good deal of the time manning the bounce house. We had a few kids. Unfortunately, there were not more people out at the park. Yet, it seems that God had us talk to just the right people that were there. We did have some kids come and play in the bounce house. The wind was a bit of problem. But I was able to pull the front of the bounce house out to keep it upright. While there was a lull between kids, I went into the bounce house and tried it out. Even with the running I’ve been doing lately, I got tired out pretty quickly. While I was in there, I saw a couple of young adults, I’d guess in their 20’s. I waved to them and they came over. The guy, Sanju, asked if he could go in. I said yes. Once he was inside, he called to his sister. Once they were both in the bounce house, I asked, “do you have any spiritual background?” They both claimed to be Christian. Then they expanded and said they were Christian from birth, born in India and now worship at the orthodox church. I continued a dialog asking lots of questions and hearing what they said. They never talked about sin, judgment or hell. I told them that Jesus said that a man “must be born again.” The girl quoted Nicodemus saying “how can a man be born again?” I tried to explain, but they ended up getting distracted and went off to get a sno cone. Since I had kids in the bounce house again, I needed to stay and man it. But I could see that Pastor Ben was now speaking with them. I did get a chance to speak with them again and provided them the entire Law and Gospel message. Pray that they consider it.

In another conversation, after playing catch with a ten year old for awhile, I was talking with him about God’s Law. He recognized that he was a sinner and had lied, stolen and disobeyed mom and dad. This kid was mature beyond his years and said, “can we go sit on the bench and talk about this?” Unfortunately after we went to go to the bench, he got distracted with the sno cones and water, took a bottle of water to his mom and never came back.

Ben and others had a number of good conversations. Several Bibles were handed out. Many tracts went out and many sno cones were enjoyed.

As we were cleaning up, I tossed some plastic bottles in the recycle bin. Looking in, there was one of our “If you’d like to reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ, please dispose of this card” tracts. Although it is sad that someone actually willingly rejected Jesus to put the card there, they did it with full knowledge of what they were doing. You can see the tract next to the Apple Juice bottle label above.

After we had the car loaded up, we were waiting for the bounce house company to come back and pick up the bounce house. While we were waiting, my wife was leaving and she said, “that guy over there has a darwin sticker on the back of his car.” I was speaking with Pastor Ben and debriefing on the event and then went around and picked up some trash. My goal is to leave the park cleaner than when we got there! After throwing out some trash I had picked up, I went over to the guy with the darwin sticker on his car and struck up a conversation. He was an atheist! Duh! He was very angry. Denied there is any God despite the evidence of the creation that we were sitting out in. He demanded a sign from God that he is real. I eventually was able to take him through the Ten Commandments and he admitted to breaking all of the ones I asked him about. About that time, his ten year old daughter came and joined us. Turns out she went to the VBS at our church and had heard the Gospel from me the past two summers! She joined in witnessing to her dad. That was really cool. Anyway, the guy was not concerned and he said he did not believe in hell or God. I explained that it does not matter what he believes, that it only matters what is true. Then a very interesting thing happened. He was sitting there with his netbook trying to do work at the park. I went over and picked it up and said, “what if I say that I believe this is mine, then I should be able to take it and nothing will happen to me.” He objected saying that is wrong and that he would call the police. At that he said, “it does not matter if you don’t believe that it is wrong, you’ll still pay the punishment.” WOW! I asked him to repeat what he said and listen to it this time. He said, “what?” At that his daughter even understood what was happening and she was like “dad listen to what you just said.” He repeated it and I pointed out again that he had just said the same thing I’d been telling him. I reiterated again that if God exists and that hell is real, then by his own admission he would go there.

At that I said, “let me make you an offer. I’ll give you a Bible. You read the book of John and then call me. I’ll buy you dinner and we can sit down and discuss it.”

You know what happened? He agreed to it!

I went to my car and got a Bible. I bookmarked John with my business card and Acts with a Gospel tract. I even gave him a copy of Ray Comfort’s Science Confirms the Bible. His daughter said, “I’ll make sure he reads it.”

This was a very interesting question. I nice balance of Law and Gospel plus some apologetics thrown in. I pray that he will read the book of John and then call me.

Our next “outreach in the park” is planned for July 3rd in The Colony, TX. I look forward to seeing what God has in store for us there.

There is a new BLOG called “First Thursday Day of Prayer“. This group is dedicated to meeting at City Hall or your place of business to pray for the nation, state and city where you live. Please consider promoting this new blog and joining us (physically) or where ever you may live on June 3rd!

In Carrollton, we will be at the Carrollton City Hall at the Northeast corner of Jackson and Josey by the flag poles at 12:20-12:40PM.

There is a new BLOG called “First Thursday Day of Prayer“. This group is dedicated to meeting at City Hall or your place of business to pray for the nation, state and city where you live. Please consider promoting this new blog and joining us (physically) or where ever you may live on June 3rd!

Duane has been visiting since Wednesday. We have been out on the streets every day preaching the Gospel. Today at lunch we meet one other friend at the mall where I have been training him to share the Gospel. The mall is an interesting place to share the Gospel because many of the rules from the street do not apply. For example, where we might hand out 100 tracts in an hour and 1000 tracts in an afternoon at the DART station, at the mall, we may only hand out a few tracts. Why? Well, most malls have rules against distribution of material within the mall Therefore, when we are in the mall, we are primarily focused on striking up conversations in the natural, swinging to the spiritual and then sharing the Law and Gospel. This is primarily done one on one. So rather than walking around handing out tracts (which the security can have you removed from the mall for) we simply walk around the mall and strike up conversations. Once we have had a conversation with someone, we will generally offer them a tract afterward.

So this environment is also different from the streets because we are not open air preaching. But, does that have to be the case? At Living Waters Ambassadors Academy, I’ve learned how to open air preach in the mall over the phone by either making or receiving a phone call and then sharing the Gospel over the phone talking loud enough to be heard by those around you.

Today we tried something different. While walking around the mall, I merely, asked Duane in a loud voice, “so do you think you will go to heaven when you die” while we were walking past a man that was walking. What ensued was a 5-10 minute dialog as we walked that covered the Law, the Gospel, the crucifixion and the person of Jesus Christ. This one man heard the whole thing. As we walked, a group of four came out of a store in front of us. So to get them caught up in the conversation, I said, “so, what you are saying is …” and reiterated some of the points of the message.

It was a great experience. One that I am sure to try again. As far as I know there is no Law against talking to your friend while you are walking around the mall. At least not yet! 

The Psalm 119 conference and the 500 brought a number of people into town that enjoy going out onto the streets to preach. Since we often go to the Dallas West End DART train station at lunch, we went, and invited a number of others to join us. We ended up with more than ten of us at the DART station. Due to my work schedule, I was only able to for an hour before heading back to work. However, Duane, Robert, Mike, Tim and others stayed longer. The Gospel was preached. Many one on one conversations were had. All totaled by the time Duane and Robert left at 5PM, probably 1,000 Gospel tracts had been distributed. It was a real blessing to be on the streets with all of these Godly men.

As the summer is hear and we have plenty of opportunities with the nice weather to go back to this location, it seems it will be one of our regular fishing holes.

For nearly a year, I’ve been participating in Project Ezra. On Easter Sunday, Pastor Ben started coming with me. It has been such a blessing to be able to read God’s Word together in the open air. This week Duane Seaberg is visiting. The three of us met at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve. For an hour we read and expounded on Bible passages. We also handed out bottles of water and Gospel tracts. We got to have several one on one conversations. One guy we talked too was a recent convert to Christianity. He expressed interest in learning how to share the Gospel. A young woman who heard us talking with him came to talk to us as well. She asked us “the best way to share your testimony?” We explained that it needs to be done in the context of the Law and Gospel and also invited her to the training seminar.

In the afternoon, we went out to Frisco where the Rough Riders were playing a baseball game. The game had started at 2PM. We planned out arrival for about 4:30. When we got there, there was a trickle of people coming out of the stadium. I suppose the Rough Riders were considerably behind and hence people were leaving early. We set up the box on the corner and Duane started preaching while I handed out tracts. We alternated turns on the box and handing out tracts.When the game was over there was a big wave of people leaving. When that crowd passed, we packed up our stuff and headed to the car.

At that point we went back to the Nature preserve. We handed out the rest of the bottles of water that we had packed that morning. We read and preached on John 4 to explain to people why we had the bottles of water. Then we read and expounded on 1 John. At that point the water was gone and it was time for dinner. So we called it a day.

Following the Psalm 119 conference, Transplant Ministries and Lost Cause Ministries hosted the Five Hundred. The idea is to get 500 Christians onto the streets of the city on the same night. There were about 120 participants that went out to witness at four venues:

• Southlake Square
• Sundance Square 
• Fort Worth Stock Yards
• Dallas West End

Byron, Tyler and I co-lead the group to the Dallas West End. Following a short briefing in Keller, we were supposed to meet in Dallas at 6:45. When we arrived at 6:20, there were already about 15 of our team members waiting for us. That was really encouraging that they were there and ready to go. Since many of them had not eaten dinner yet, we decided to brief the group, pray and get started a few minutes early. After prayer, some went to eat dinner and the rest started witnessing. More members of the group arrived for the next 20-30 minutes. We were also blessed to meet up with four guys who witness regularly in the West End.

We set up our main station at the corner of Corbin and Market. During the entire evening we always had someone stationed in this area. We had a box setup for open air preaching. A number of us preached from this area. At one point, an angry agnostic was questioning me while I preached. That heckling drew in a good sized crowd. Eventually, he went away frustrated. His question revolved around foolish things like what was the date that God created the earth. I pointed him to Acts 17 that the time of ignorance is passed.

Others in the group went to the DART station and some others went over to the Bodies exhibit. Ellen handed out her fist Gospel tract! That is awesome. Stepping out of her comfort zone. Our youngest son, Brendan, got up on the box and read two Gospel tracts. That was really cool to see him be excited to share the Gospel in the open air. LeeAnn was out on the streets for the first time. She spent a long time speaking with a woman who could not see very well LeeAnn did a great job speaking with her by reading a Gospel tract to her to since the woman was unable to read it. Way to go, LeeAnn!

At 9PM we meet back at our meeting point, shared our experiences and then prayed. This may be the start of a new West End outreach group. There were a number of people in the group that indicated an interest in coming back out at least once a month. We will be working on organizing these outreaches in the coming months. It was a pleasure to be part of this event. I look forward to additional 500 outreaches.

Once we had wrapped up, we realized there was a deep need right before us. We spoke with a man named Joseph, He was on dialysis and had just gotten out of jail. He needed to get back home to Arkansas to continue his dialysis. We were able to provide him food, water and a bus ticket. In so doing we provided him a stack of Gospel tracts and watched him hand them out at the bus station. While at the bus station we were able to witness to a number of people as well.

On Friday and Saturday we attended the Psalm 119 conference on discernment in Keller, Texas that was put on by Todd Friel and Wretched TV. The conference was very well attended. My guess is that there were about 800 people there. The speakers included

• Todd Friel
• Peter Hammond
• Phil Johnson
• Justin Peters
• Paul Taylor
• Emilio Ramos
• Trisha Ramos

In addition to these speakers, worship was lead by Go Fish.

There was so much great teaching that it is hard to point out any one thing that was the highlight. So, I’ll point out a few things. First, Justin Peters sessions on the Word of Faith movement were extremely timely for me. Thus, they really stick out to me as a highlight of the conference. He makes a good point that not everything that a false teacher says is wrong. But, if the teacher has truth mixed with heresy then we need discernment to tell the difference. Bottom line – test everything against the scriptures.
Secondly, Phil Johnson spoke one session about modern issues like contextualization. Again, this is something that I’d been discussing recently with someone so it was of particular interest to me.
Finally, a huge highlight was seeing some friends that live out of town and meeting some friends for the first time that I had previously only known on Facebook.
It is my understanding that the audio of the sessions will be available later this year from Wretched.

On Thursday night about 20 of us meet outside of the Dallas Convention Center where Benny Hinn was having a service. Benny Hinn is a leader in the Health and Wealth (prosperity movement) which teaches a number of things that are contrary to the Word of God. A large portion of the group was preaching near one of the entrances to the Convention Center. As people were coming, we also were handing out tracts and having some one on one conversations with the people that were attending the service.

Eventually, the police came and asked us to move to the other side of the street. This was odd, since they would not indicate that we had actually done anything wrong. We complied, moved across the street and continued preaching.

Myself and Duane Seaberg wondered down the street and found another spot to preach from. Along the way we spoke with a group of people that were going to the service. We had a short discussion with them and warned them about Hinn being a false prophet. We also had a short conversation with a devout Jew.

Following that, we went up on a hill and Duane, Kevin and I each preached the Gospel.