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Indiana @ tOSU Ministry Report – Oct 6, 2018

October 9, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

Kurtis preaching while Miri holds a sign. We gave away over a half a dozen Bibles!

Oct 6 was the first game this season where we arrived after the game began. For the first three games this year, we would normally arrive about 3 hours before kickoff, and minister to the crowds as they walk to the game.

This week’s game was 4pm, so we planned to arrive about 6pm. This gets us there about an hour to an hour an a half before the game ends. The evangelism is very different from before to after game.

Kurtis is almost 19 and is a college freshman at Cedarville University. He has been preaching for a couple years and the Lord is growing him. 

Imagine a simple scenario with simple numbers. Before the game, let’s say about 30,000 walk past us over the course of 3 hours. That is about 10,000 people per hour or about 1,600 people every ten minutes who walk past and hear the gospel or get a tract.

Post-game evangelism differs because instead of a few hours of people hanging around and making their way toward the stadium, the entire crowd is leaving the football game at roughly the same time. So that 30,000 people who are walking back to their cars makes their way in about an hour. So instead of about 1,600 people walking past you every 10 minutes, it’s more like 5,000 people every 10 minutes!

This makes for much larger crowds while preaching. Notice in this photo below how many people are within earshot of my preaching!

Additionally, it seems people are more willing to take tracts or Bibles because they are just on their way home. Very few people want to carry a Bible to a football game, but if you’re just getting in your car anyway, why not?

 

Jason and Miri

I’m thankful to Jason and Miri Roberts and Kurtis and Kenton Gould for going with me this week. We had a sweet time of worship prior to evangelism and sang A Mighty Fortress. Jason commented that this really got him in a spirit of worship and service to God, and he thinks it had a calming effect on Miri, too, who is only 9 years old, but is a baptized believer serving the Lord Jesus Christ.

Worshiping with hymns is something I hope to do every time we are out together!

We handed out hundreds of tracts, and Kurtis and I preached for almost a total of 3 hours. Many souls heard the Word of God. Our Lord kept evildoers away from us and sent encouragement, as always. I even received a $1 donation. Praise the Lord that someone desired to support us!

It was a night when we could see that a few more laborers would have helped us pass out thousands more tracts. Would you pray that the Lord would raise up more laborers for the harvest?

One highlight was when I was preaching after the game, Kurtis overheard someone say, “Ugh, I thought that guy wasn’t here this week.”

I actually wondered if people would notice we weren’t there for pre-game! It is nice to know that our consistency is noticed. This is one of the keys to returning to the same location every home game for a whole season. Sinners notice, and we hope God would use these means to draw folks to His preacher — that they might hear and believe!

Filed Under: Gospel, Open Air Preaching, Witnessing Tagged With: 2018 OSU, attributes of God, God, Grace, Love, Mercy, Open Air, people, power, preaching, pride

Tulane @ tOSU Ministry Report – Sept 22, 2018

September 24, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

Instead of a long report in paragraph form, I’ve decided to post “quick hit” updates from our Saturday, September 22 day of ministry/evangelism at THE Ohio State University football game vs Tulane.

Dana Lewin

There is Joy in Serving Jesus

  • I was joined by 5 wonderful men of God: Caleb Davenport, Kurtis Gould, Adam Burd, Chase Vendley and Fred Triplett.
  • I don’t have a count of tracts passed out, but my box of tracts was significantly lighter when we finished!
  • We preached for at least 3 hours. For about an hour we preached on two street corners.
  • The after evangelism fellowship meal at Raising Canes was sweet fellowship, and, in my estimation, an important part of the endeavor.

Everyone Responds

  • Often we are asked if anyone responds to our “methods.” The answer is “Yes, everyone responds.” People either respond by believing in Jesus or rejecting Jesus.
  • While I was preaching, a man walked by me and gave me a fatherly disapproving look as I preached. He shouted, “Right message, wrong method.” I thought to myself but did not say, “I don’t appreciate the method he used to tell me that.” Let the reader understand.
  • The pornographers who had been passing out their garbage at our “corner of righteousness” did not show up this week. Were they finally driven away by the consistent witness of the Law of God and the Gospel of God?
  • Many Christians encouraged us with high fives, thumbs up or just little waves as they walked by. Thanks be to God for His people and their joy in hearing God’s Word preached.

Consistency Matters

  • I believe that being at the same location for years, and for every game has had an effect.
  • Other evangelists know us.
  • The pornographers may have been driven away by our presence.
  • The police are familiar with us, and they know we are there to do justice and to love kindness.
  • Team members have no trouble finding the rest of the team, because we are always in the same place. Folks who show up late do not lose the rest of the team, because we stay at the corner of righteousness.

Praise God for His good work this weekend. He is worthy to be praised, and we should thank Him for another chance to preach and teach His Word to sinners.

Filed Under: Gospel, Open Air Preaching, Witnessing Tagged With: 2018 OSU, Christ, church, evangelism, Gospel, Open Air, people, Righteous

Rutgers@tOSU Ministry Report – Sept 8, 2018

September 11, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

Proverbs 28:1 “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

Contrasting Righteousness and Wickedness

Once again at the “corner of righteousness” we encountered a group of pornographers who were passing out their own “tracts” for admission to a local strip club. At the time they appeared, good brother Kurtis was preaching.

Kurtis preaching in the rain with his Waterproof Bible by Bardin & Marsee Publishing.

Kurtis didn’t actually see the folks peddling immorality, but he preached God’s Word with “the boldness of a lion.” I was slightly bothered, because, if you read last week’s post, you know that I intentionally preached against the immorality in order to drive away the evildoers.

But God, who can do exceedingly and abundantly more than I can even think, had plans to drive these folks away without my wisdom. Whether it was the rain, the godly preaching, or just a lack of response, these purveyors of sex, and abusers of women only lasted a few minutes at our corner and left!

God certainly didn’t need me or my best ideas to accomplish what I asked him to do in prayer. We can trust that the wicked flee when no one pursues, and that the preaching of God’s Word with lionlike boldness may be used by God to drive away evil, even when the specific evil isn’t being preached about! Praise the Lord!

The Just and the Unjust

God sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). This was a day where commitment was questioned, and love for God and the lost tested. Four people who were expected to minister along side of me canceled, as well as two others who normally help who could not make it. Thank God for Kurtis who recruited a friend from Cedarville to come and give out the gospel. It was great to welcome Adam Burd to our team and get to know him a little. It turns out this was his first time evangelizing!

We stood in rain for almost 3 hours and preached the gospel the entire time. Kurt and I took turns preaching, while Adam tracted the crowds. I noticed one lady stop to ask Adam questions and he was able to speak to her.

We try not to be fair-weather evangelists.

Adam and a lady with her daughter.

If God send rain on the Buckeyes game, the fans who bought tickets will still be there. We will be there too. But it is especially encouraging when a person will stop and talk to you in the rain. I was very impressed with Adam because he was not raised around street preaching, yet he seemed entirely comfortable with it. Truly we can trust this is a work of God’s grace in his life.

Around 30 minutes prior to game time, I actually went to another corner so that Kurtis and I were letting everyone who came near us hear the Word. Normally, we try to stick together, but we thought it important that the people on the other side of the street be given the gospel as well.

Some Apologetic

“That’s a form of sanity,” said a guy at the corner as I preached.

“Oh. Yes. To not believe the Bible would be crazy,” I replied.

“No. You don’t understand,” his buddy let me know, “that’s your personal truth, and as long as your good with it, it’s a ‘form of sanity.'”

It seems this “form of sanity” concept was important to him and his buddy. So I told them the reason that what I was doing is sane is that I was preaching {trigger warning} “objective truth.” They took exception with this idea. They challenged that the Bible was objective truth, raising the fact that Hemingway wrote stuff, too, “so why isn’t that objective truth as well.”

Ponchos kept us dry underneath, but we weren’t ready for how cold it was standing outside that long. Our hands stopped working!

These young men were in a hurry to be somewhere, so there wasn’t much time to get deep with them, but I told them their own philosophy was a failure because it couldn’t support itself. I told them that the mere concept of personal truth was just their own personal truth and thus easily refuted by me saying I didn’t believe in it.

Not understanding the point, one of the guys said to me, “your belief in Christ and the Bible is a philosophy, too.”

“Yes, it is,” I told him. “But it’s internally consistent. That is, it does not refute itself — like your philosophy which is self-contradictory. You believe in personal truth absolutely, so much so you project that idea onto me. You believe absolutely that personal truth exists.”

I was encouraged that as I was saying those last couple sentences, they had already started to cross the street to their destination, but they walked backwards, as if continuing to converse with me was quite important to them. Maybe when they crossed the street, Adam gave them a tract and they heard gospel preaching from Kurt? God knows!

Not Without Difficulty

Grateful for the gospel fellowship we shared afterward over a meal, and for young men who give up their Saturday to minister to the lost.

A note to all who follow the ministry and support us in various ways. We are forever under various trials, some minor some major. After we had our fellowship meal and departed, I stopped to buy some food for my wife which she needed to cook for our church fellowship meal the next day. This was around 5:30.

My car battery had died. After all was said and done with a tow truck and a replacement batter in the rain, I didn’t get home until 8:30, making for nearly a 10 hour day. Praise God for a godly woman who takes care of my home and kids and sends her husband out as her good sacrifice to Jesus for all He’s done for her. It isn’t just those on the street who are dying to self for Christ, we’re just the ones who get our pictures on websites for our labors.

Secondly, I met up with some other guys that day who are street preachers as well. I had some reservations about them due to encounters in the past with folks like they are and folks they associate with. But I didn’t want to judge a book by a cover so I was happy to give them some tracts and fellowship with them briefly. I was caught off guard the next day when one of them called me to accuse me of supporting idolatry because I wore an OSU football jersey. As he described me as participating in worldliness and the works of darkness I responded like I hoped Paul would; I gave him a sharp rebuke for his apparent legalism and unrighteous judgement and exhorted him to become an actual submitted member of a local church (which he is not). I warned him that I have seen guys like him come and go and make shipwrecks of their faith as they travel the USA with no accountability to anyone but themselves.

These are difficult situations to deal with and only by the power of God can we hope to come out of them without sinning against God and man. And I hope that you would partner with me in prayer, not only for God to send His elect to the corner of righteousness on tOSU game days, but that he would sanctify me and my team by His Spirit and the Word, that we might be prepared to honor Him in the day of battle.


P.S. As I sat in my dead car waiting for a tow truck, I said to myself, “Well, I guess God wants someone else to hear the gospel.” Thanks to the dead battery, I was able to speak to the tow truck driver about Christ, hand out a few tracts at the autoparts store, and give the gospel to one of the employees and really challenge his lack of commitment to the local church.

Filed Under: Gospel, Open Air Preaching, Witnessing Tagged With: 2018 OSU, church, evangelism, Grace, Ohio State, Open Air, preaching

OSU@tOSU Ministry Report – Sept 1, 2018

September 5, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

Typical crowd crossing the street on their way to the stadium.

The launch of the college football season for 2018 has begun, and so our SFOI 1000 work has begun as well. Click that link to see the rest of the dates that we will be ministering at the Ohio State University. Here is an update from the first week of the season.

Be On Time

One important aspect of leading a team to evangelize is planning. Working with 5-10 people and trying to get people to agree on a time to meet can be difficult. One of the biggest time wasters is sitting in traffic waiting for parking. With a noon gametime, the goal it to get there by 9. Any earlier and it’s tough to get people out of bed!

I ran later than I wanted this first week, and so the evangelism time was cut short by about a half an hour. I had hoped to be preaching by 9am, but didn’t start until almost 9:30. We trust the sovereign God who knew that I would be the only preacher present. He may have saved my vocal chords as I was still able to preach for about 2 hours with a couple breaks in the middle of the open air sermons.

I can’t stress how vital it is that everyone is on the same page. Before ministering to the crowd, we pray and sing hymns together. If a person or group is late, then either everyone else has to wait to minister, or we have to sing and pray without the entire team. Once we spread out to pass out tracts, it’s really hard to reel people in for those important activities, so my goal it always to set an early arrival time for my teams.

God gave me great joy by sending an old friend who I haven’t seen in nearly a decade. I loved our short visit.

Encouragement & Answered Prayer

God was gracious to us this Saturday by sending multiple Christians to us to encourage us. One husband and wife stopped to comment on the preaching, thank us for being there and pray for us. What a mighty God we serve! The man who prayed for us, Alex, asked if we ever did street evangelism and I said, “yes, we’d love to.” Maybe we will hear from him again as I gave him contact information.

Another man, Kadre, approached us as well, telling us he is also an evangelist. One of the things we prayed for prior to the event was that God would raise up more laborers to join us. We will see if that is what God is doing with Alex and Kadre!

My own heart is cheered by the men who came with me. Joe, Josh, Nicholas, and Fred all faithfully ministered through tracts, prayer and a willingness to speak one on one to people. I am grateful for my team of 5, but I hope to have 10-12 a few times so that we might reach more people with the gospel!

unsplash-logoEdan Cohen

Light versus Darkness

One of the reasons we go to sporting events is strategic. We go where there are a lot of people, in order that the message might be broadcast to as many as possible, even if only a few heed what we are dispensing. Well, strategy isn’t a Christian-only concept, and our dear corner of the Ohio State University was also being used to peddle complimentary passes to a central Ohio strip club!

I absolutely loathe sexual immorality and wickedness, and so, armed with the best weapon I could think of, I stepped on my stool and began to preach against the very immorality being peddled on that corner. I preached hard, praying internally as I preaching.

How do you preach against a particular evil while also proclaiming the life saving gospel? Like Jesus did. He is our example. Jesus preached against wickedness and often directed comments at particular people in the audience, yet constantly called people to repent and believe.

I am happy to say, with God’s help, the evildoers were driven away from my corner. I have called it the corner where righteousness dwells, and, as long as I have a voice, I will continue to make folks like that uncomfortable and give them the life-saving gospel. I sincerely do hope the young people who are exploiting women for money will be saved by grace, and I also hope that I kept them from tempting people to stray from their marriages and families, even if only temporarily.

May God be Glorified

We thank the sovereign God for bringing us home safely, providing wonderful fellowship and a meal after we were finished, and for the loads of encouragement we received.

We trust that His sheep hear his voice and they will follow Him. Please take a moment to pray for us and all those to whom we will be ministering in the future, and for those whom we have ministered to.

Filed Under: Gospel, Love, Open Air Preaching, Witnessing Tagged With: 2018 OSU, evangelism, Gospel, Ohio State, Open Air, people, preaching

Hymns That Don’t Rhyme

August 26, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

We’ve all been there. You’re belting it all out for Christ, everything is flowing nicely, then suddenly, the lyrics STOP RHYMING. But it’s not just that there’s a bad rhyme that’s bothersome. It’s the fact that the author appeared to try to find words that were “close to rhyming” that just seems awful. Or even worse — the words are spelled the same, yet pronounced distinctly.

In the spirit of fun, I intend to allow this webpage to be a list of poorly rhyming hymns. Feel free to add a comment with your favorite (and be sure to credit the author where applicable).

Note – This is just a start! Let’s have fun with this and keep adding more.

Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed — Isaac Watts

Was it for crimes that I have done, He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown! And love beyond degree!

Thus might I hide my blushing face; while his dear cross appears;
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, And melt mine eyes to tears.

But drops of tears can ne’er repay The debt of love I owe.
Here, Lord, I give myself away; ‘Tis all that I can do.

Amazing Grace — John Newton

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

And Can It Be — Charles Wesley

And can it be that I should gain An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain — For me, who Him to death pursued?

Be Thou My Vision — Eleanor Henrietta Hull

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;

Before The Throne of God Above — Chartie Lees Bancroft

Behold Him there, the risen Lamb My perfect, spotless Righteousness
The great unchangeable I AM The King of glory and of grace
One with Himself, I cannot die My soul is purchased by His blood
My life is hid with Christ on high With Christ my Savior and my God

Blessed Assurance — Fanny Crosby

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Come Thou Fount — John Wyeth

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise

Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by Thy great help I’ve come
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood.

Oh, that day when freed from sinning, I shall see Thy lovely face
Clothed then in the blood washed linen, How I’ll sing Thy wondrous grace

Fairest Lord Jesus — August Heinrich

Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, O Thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou my soul’s glory, joy and crown.

Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations! Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, praise, adoration, now and forevermore be thine.

Hallelujah! What a Savior! — Philip P. Bliss

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Filed Under: Just me

2018 SFOI College Football OSU Schedule

August 1, 2018 by Michael Coughlin

Reach the Lost

We will be participating in the SFOI 1000 this fall and ministering the gospel at each Ohio State home football game, as well as the Big 10 Championship game.

If you are interested, please review the rules by clicking here.

If you agree to those rules, and you would like to be added to the team to receive regular updates, just fill out this contact us form and specify that.

All games at Ohio Stadium. Kickoff time listed. Ministry time TBD.

Sep. 1 Oregon State Beavers Noon ET
Sep. 8 Rutgers Scarlet Knights 3:30pm ET
Sep. 22 Tulane Green Wave 3:30pm ET
Oct. 6 Indiana Hoosiers 3:30/4pm ET
Oct. 13 Minnesota Golden Gophers TBA
Nov. 3 Nebraska Cornhuskers TBA
Nov. 24 TTUN Noon ET
 
Dec. 1 Big Ten Championship Game
Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN 8:00pm ET
(Ministry all day leading up to the game)

Filed Under: Gospel, Open Air Preaching, Witnessing

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