John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

Christ

Tulane @ tOSU Ministry Report – Sept 22, 2018

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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.

2017 B1G Championship Outreach Report.

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What an exciting day God had in store for us as we ministered the gospel to the good folks at the B1G 10 Championship Game in Indianapolis, IN for the fourth time ever out of the 7 total Big 10 Championship games which have been played.

Caleb, Josh, Joe, Kenton, me & Kurtis pictured Left to Right. The six of us filled nearly 6 hours of preaching and handed out tracts to hundreds of people who need Jesus.

We had a really bad experience with the police in 2015 which prompted us to get a lawyer to assist us prior to this year’s event. So we arrived with a letter from a lawyer outlining our legal rights. Around 2:30, Kenton was approached by the police and he motioned for me to come over and talk to the officer. I tried to record the conversation which started with me giving him a letter we had from The Liberty Institute regarding free speech laws.

Have a listen to my Conversation with the Police It’s less than 6 minutes long.

The real money quote from the whole thing though was when the police officer said this.

You know what, if they come up and complain, then I’ll just tell them it’s their…their freedom of speech. That’s why we live in the United States.

It took all my energy to not shout, “Yes! That is exactly what you should be doing!” I’m so glad he came to that conclusion. May this cause you to praise our glorious God and Saviour, Jesus Christ who graciously allowed us to continue to preach and tract the crowds the rest of the day undeterred.

Kurtis calling sinners to repent and believe in Christ the Savior.

We managed to fill almost 6 hours of preaching that day. We competed with a loud music concert and even a small two man trumpet and drum band. Hundreds of people received tracts and thousands of people heard the gospel preached. We left 3 hours before game time, we could reach thousands more if we stayed in Indianapolis!

We are grateful to good brother Chris Dean who showed up with 3 pizzas and 6 water bottles for the crew. This allowed us to stay on the mission without leaving for lunch.

Kenton tracting the crowds.

You can get an idea of the layout. For perspective, we stood directly to the left as you look at this photo to preach. The city blocks off Georgia Street and the entire street for one block is a big party with a big screen TV showing other football games, a music concert and food and drink booths.

As always, we sang a couple hymns and preceded most open air sermons with prayer. Our team worked hard and enjoyed very mild weather. It was actually a little warm until the sun went behind a building. We were prepared with handwarmers!

Thanks to everyone who has helped. So many people have contributed in various ways whether it is encouragement, service, financial help or prayer. Thanks you for your faithfulness! And praise God that He is ever faithful!

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How I Made My Waterproof Hymnals

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One of my favorite things to do in the open air is sing gospel songs to the Lord Jesus Christ. This post is meant to be instructive to you if you wanted to create your own waterproof hymnal.

In 2013, during the Super Bowl Outreach in New Orleans, I discovered with my team of evangelists that singing songs together in the open air was good for our souls. It seemed to calm us down when we were anxious, brought unity to our team, and attracted listeners: listeners who would hear the gospel in song or through our preaching afterward.

For several years, every time we wanted to sing outside, we had to tell people to sing songs from memory, or we all had to try to open our phones to the same version of a hymn. It was impossible. We would end up singing different lyrics or one guy would find a website which had an extra verse. Plus, we were all holding phones and, if you have ever been on a long outreach, you know phone batter preservation is paramount! Hymnbooks from church were too cumbersome and heavy to carry, and it wasn’t worth the risk of ruining a nice church hymnbook if we experienced poor weather!

So I set out to create a portable, lightweight, waterproof songbook which I could bring with me on outreaches (or anywhere) and for family worship. I wanted 10-12 books, to encourage everyone to sing together. Here is the result.

Here you see the last two pages of the songbook which is my index. I list the songs alphabetically with their page number. I also have the songs alphabetical in the songbook, but I separated “Christmas” songs from “non Christmas” songs. Click the image to make it larger.

Here is what you need. All the links will open in new tabs so you can click them and then read the post and then all the tabs will be there for you to peruse.

So you can see that the total cost for the books is near $60-$100 depending on how many you make and how much help you get.

The first thing to decide is if you are going to use all public domain hymns or if you want to include songs which have copyrights. This is why you need a CCLI license (or you need to contact the copyright owner for each song and get permission to print).

Here is song 25 of my book. You can see at the bottom the attribution of the authors and the explanation that this is public domain.

Once you have your list of songs, you need to get all the lyrics into your software. If I did this again I would find a book publishing program or feature which is better than Word. But I used Microsoft Word. The hard part was laying out the book. For example, in MS Word, the hymns are in the following order 4 and 1 on the first page, and 2 and 3 on the second page. That is what allows 2 to be on the back of 1, and then 4 on the back of page 3 once the book is cut.

I had to play with fonts and font sizes to get everything to fit. One thing I didn’t consider was that on some pages the binding would be on the right, and on other pages the binding would be on the right. This actually causes some words to be cut off on some of my pages. If I could do it over, I’d be more careful.

After you have completed your electronic copy of your book, print it out on a cheap printer and paper (not the waterproof paper) and review it. Then you can practice loading the printer properly and verify things look right without wasting the expensive paper.

In my case,  I couldn’t get the margins small enough, so I actually printed the copyright information separately and then literally cut and paste taped those onto each page. Once ready, I used the laser printer like a photocopier.

Finally, I took the finished work to a friend who works at a print company. She was able to cut them really cleanly and punch the holes for the spirals. She even bound them for me. For the finishing touches, I put a blank (white) page at the beginning and end of each book, along with the transparent cover. The blank page can be decorated as the cover page because of the transparent cover. You can see a couple examples of the art my sweet daughter, Alexandra, put on the books. The art was added AFTER production.

When you open the cover on the book to the left above, this is what you see:

It makes for a nice aesthetic effect. Also, this gives you a blank page at the beginning and end of your book which you can write in if you ever need to.

The transparent outer cover gives you some protection from rain. Waterproof pages are great, but no reason to test ’em! Now I have a dozen lightweight compact songbooks suitable for Christian worship anytime and anywhere! Praise the Lord!

If I was starting over, here’s what I’d do differently.

  1. I would put the index/table of contents in the front. It just seems more natural to people.
  2. I’d have the lyrics checked and double checked and triple checked. I ended up stumbling upon some diverse versions of some songs and it makes familiar tunes hard to sing from the book when the lyrics are different from what people know!
  3. Use software that would do more of the work (page layout) for me, control the margins, etc. I did a lot of unnecessary work. But it was a labor of love as well.
  4. Purchase the smallest possible spirals. My spirals are too big. They work well enough, but they aren’t quite right for my book thickness.

So with that information you are ready to self-publish and manufacture your own set of hymnbooks. Be sure to TAKE YOUR TIME because once you create a book you will not want to start over! If you do it, let me know

Preachers of All Ages – Maryland @ tOSU Outreach

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The God we serve is infinitely amazing. He graciously gave us a wonderful day to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ before Ohio State trounced overcame a tough Maryland football team! Here is a photo of the men who joined me Saturday except for Mark Seward who had already left by the time the photo was taken.

We began our ministry at 1pm by singing a couple hymns together and then praying for our time. I really believe the corporate worship benefits each of us before (and after) the ministry time.

LtoR Kurtis Gould, Chase Vendley, Caleb Davenport, Joshua Richards, John Rataczak, Joe Conkle, Fred Triplett & Michael Coughlin

One of the neat things that God does here in Central Ohio is pull people together to this ministry from all ages and walks of life. On Saturday, Oct 7, 2017, we had a preacher in his teens, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties.

But what a joy it was to see so many people take turns preaching. One of my hopes is that for several hours there will never be a break from people hearing the preaching. With so many willing men, that’s a possibility!

Along with preaching, we handed out at least 1,000 tracts and held up a wooden cross

This day brought more vocal opposition than usual. A man came up to me as I was preaching and told me to preach about love, not sin. He said that’ll attract more people.

I cannot read another person’s heart, but his eyes and his spirit appeared haughty to me. It is impossible for me to say for sure, of course, but it was the impression I got. I told him to stick around and listen a little (because I do, in fact, preach the love of God demonstrated in the crucifixion of His Son), but he sorta patted me on the arm and said, “just preach love,” while smirking. I asked him if he was offering me correction, and he said yes, not seeing the irony in the encounter.

Caleb Davenport preaching.

Another piece of new of note is that someone from one of the other church groups came up to Fred and told him no one could get saved from reading our tract. Fred asked why not, and he told Fred, “It doesn’t contain the gospel.” Rather than confronting the man, we chose to continue our ministry. Nevertheless, if this man cannot see the gospel in our tract, we are left to wonder what he thinks the gospel is, which makes us fear for his soul! Imagine showing up at Buckeyes games week in and week out, peddling a message to people, suffering shame, and not yourself being born-again! Pray for this man that his eyes may be opened.

While I was preaching a young woman approached me and engaged me. It is important to know that I was preaching the righteousness of God found in Jesus Christ, the sinfulness of man, and the exclusivity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. This woman comes up to me and says, “All I hear is you’re [me] such a good person and we are not.”

What???  Is that really what she heard? Yet we are not surprise because the Word of God tells us

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
(1Co 2:14)

and

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
(1Co 1:18)

So we do not lose heart (2 Cor 4:1), but we continue! This same woman told me she wasn’t a bad person after I corrected her and told her we are all bad people, and then she proceeded to proclaim her own goodness (Prov 20:6). She told me she had never stolen or murdered anybody. I asked her if she’d ever hated anyone and she said she had not. So I asked her if she was pro-choice, and she replied yes.

Then I informed her that by being pro-choice she is approving of murder and is a murderer at heart. She immediately played the “what if someone was raped” card and tried to convince me that killing Hitler or Stalin when they were infants would have been a good thing. This is the irrationality of the godless worldview, nothing makes sense, so anything makes sense. She told me I had a blind faith and it was stupid to believe God talked to Abraham…then told me she was Jewish. I guess she meant that was her nationality? 🙂

John preaching with Joe standing by.

Eventually, I chose to just keep preaching instead of let her distract me from preaching any longer. Like I said earlier I want someone on the box at all times, and I didn’t feel like getting off to talk to her would have served the mission. But my favorite part of the whole encounter was when she said

You’re just one of those preachers who wants to say what you want to say, but you don’t want to listen to what anyone else has to say.

Since I was already on the defensive with her a little, I was getting ready to retort, but then I just said, “Exactly. Yes, that is exactly my goal here. I’m here to proclaim the truth today.”

For many people that sentiment will seem wrong, or, at the very least, impractical. But that is the nature of preaching, is it not? Are we to be ashamed of the method prescribed by God for spreading His Word because his enemies loathe it? Shall ambassadors for Christ be concerned with the opinions of those with whom we are sent to command to make peace with our King? God forbid! May the Lamb of God receive the reward for His suffering! I am actively recruiting people to join me for the Super Bowl in Minnesota, click here to see how you can help!

Kurtis preaching to the crowd!

Open Air Preaching from Home

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I am sure you’ve heard of “working from home.” But have you heard of open air preaching from home? I want to share what I think was a singularly unique experience to me. Maybe you’ll think so, too!

My 3 year old son Wesley had just gone outside into the backyard. My teenagers were on the couch with my 9 month old and my wife was gone. All was quiet on our little street and then I heard the doorbell, or a knock. I looked over and saw a man in a suit with a young boy. I figured they were Jehovah’s Witness, and headed over to the door.

The young boy showed me a pamphlet and was trying to talk to me. You could tell it was taking some courage for him to do whatever he was doing. Had he been a boy scout or a basketball player raising money for a trip, I’d have bought popcorn or candles or whatever he was peddling to encourage him.

After I took the pamphlet I looked quickly at it to find the JW markings. The man was saying something about Scriptures and the boy was talking about love…and I told them to hold on, while I went and grabbed a tract.

I always try to give JWs a tract because I have been told they are not allowed to take them. It’s a test, in a sense. If they take it, fine. If they refuse, it opens the door to asking them why I should take their stuff and they don’t take mine, etc.

So I went out on the porch and started asking the boy what he thought. He kept saying they were walking around to ask people what “they thought.” I asked him if he believed Jesus died on a cross for sinners, and he mumbled yes and then the older man corrected me and said Jesus died on a stick. I repeated that He died on a cross and then asked if they believed Jesus is God. The boy just stared and the man said “No.”

I don’t intend to prove this here, but if you do not believe Jesus Christ is God, (and not just “a” god, but the God) you do not believe the saving gospel.

So I started talking to the boy and telling him that whatever the man he is with has been telling him is false and will lead him to Hell. I started explaining that Jesus had to be God to die in the place of sinners; that if Jesus was only a man that He would not have been able to satisfy God’s wrath for sinners!

The reason I did this is twofold.

  1. I have found that JWs usually travel in pairs, (like Sith), and, like Sith, there is usually a learner and a ‘master.’ I believe all men who hear the saving gospel of grace and of Christ’s glorious resurrection can be saved, but I’ve found experienced JWs particularly hard to interact with. But a 9 or 10 year old child who was obviously nervous about whatever faith he had? I was sure I could get him thinking and maybe be used of God for his salvation.
  2. As I mentioned, the context was that I had a 3 year old alone outside, a couple of teenagers watching a baby and no wife at home. I didn’t believe I had time for a friendly conversation where I slowly tried to lead them to the gospel. Nor, honestly, do I want to listen to their beliefs. I know many wonderful Christians who will sit and listen to pagans share their thoughts and many times blaspheme Christ. I do not believe it is my duty to allow them the privilege.

The man immediately recognized what was happening and saw he would get nowhere with me and said, come on, let’s go. And he led the lad away. So I quoted Matthew 18:6 to him. They, of course, kept walking, so I kept talking, louder and louder. Within seconds I was open air preaching from my porch to this man and this child as they met with one of their cohorts across the street. I continued to preach the necessity of the new birth, believe in the deity of the Christ and the truth of the resurrection for the justification for sinners. You could see the bewilderment as I do not think they expected this, nor probably ever encountered it.

I started to hope I had neighbors who would hear the preaching too! I saw a family walking toward the house who looked like they may be the young lad’s family and I started preaching in their direction. Finally, they all headed as far away as they could until I could no longer see them.

I am sure some (Christian) people would not feel comfortable with this story. But when was this young man going to hear the gospel if not from the preacher whose door he was brought to providentially? Do I know how many more days any of those folks had before they met their maker? Do you not believe that it is through the foolishness of what we preach that men are saved from the wrath of almighty God?

I am not saying that is the only way to interact with JWs (or anyone). But I am grateful to God for the opportunity to preach His Word today, even if it was only for 3 minutes. 6 people heard the gospel, my own children heard me preach the gospel and saw the importance of it.

Maybe the sweetest part was coming inside and praying with my children for the salvation of sinners and then singing hymns together as worship of Jesus Christ! May God be praised and may He have mercy on the men and woman and children who visited my neighborhood today.