Monday, July 16, 2007

Waterfont Fun With The Gospel

While Friday night was about hostility and the faithfulness of God for our protection Saturday was about us being like an unmovable Ox. As in Prov 14:4 an Ox makes a mess but God's work gets done through it. We were shut down a couple times by the cops and security guards on Saturday. But all the while they were focused on us there was another team preaching the Gospel just out of sight of us. They were protected and given liberty because the "authorities" were too busy harassing us. We did not ask them to stay, they simply gathered around us continually as you'll see in the pics below.

Here is Todd of Open Air Campaigners doing a presentation with a sketch board. You'd be amazed at how effective this is.

I arrived a little later than most everyone else, here you can see me in the background getting prepared in the Word before I get involved.
Here's some of us talking with a cop who was hired to help security at the Tall Ships event.

Here I am with a group of security people. Not at all in violation of anything they had asked me not to do. They were simply drawn to me.

Here's Dennis taking some of the heat off of me.
We actually had a great day! And in the end some of those security guards got Tracts and left us with a smile and a wave! We didn't end up chatting with all of them - there were thousands of people for them to look after - but we are in prayer for them and I hope you will be too!

Update: It should be mentioned why the security guards, and the hired police officer were even talking to us in the first place. There was some question over whether Todd was allowed to be doing his presentation in the areas we were in. We were on Public owned ground (by all accounts even the Police Officer) but there was a special event going on. Vendors had been required to buy permits from a company in order to set up. Not all vendors had done so, but the "requirement" was there. When asked to move, we discussed with them, and then complied even though we felt we were fully with in the rights given us as Citizens of Canada.

Then we moved to the sidewalk, and the company again claimed it owned access to this area again so we then moved across the street.

In the end it all worked out great!

3 comments:

Todd Nielsen said...

Kevin, it was great to meet you this past weekend and to battle with you for the glory of God and the souls of men! What a battle it was my fire-ball (Ox)friend! ;-)

Your zeal and passion for evangelism was of great encouragment to me. To see you follow after someone that was walking away after they listened for a while was awesome. I've been preaching 'a la' open air for just over a year now, many times with just one friend to join me or none at all. When you're preaching you see who's taking it in, but can't follow-up with everyone after so it was great to see you boldly reach out to them.

Amy Carmichael wrote a little tract I read that described the lost screaming and slipping off a cliff into hell while the 'church members' just sat and sang a hymn and then sang it a little louder when the screams became more audible. Thank you for not sitting back Kevin.

The Lord's blessings on you,
Todd

Lou Martuneac said...

Kevin:

I commend you for this form of direct evangelism.

When I lived in Pensacola (1987-1992) I used to go down to the waterfront in the evenings to "draw near" (Luke 24:15) lost people to share the Gospel with them.

Your article and pictures brought back that memory.

Kind regards,

Lou

Kevl said...

We had a blast! You should see Todd do his flip board thing. He's a natural!

I love telling the Gospel to people! Can't imagine doing anything else with my life to be honest.