evangelism

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Movie Theater Witnessing

January 8, 2012 by Michael Coughlin

I planned to go out witnessing the first Saturday of 2012. My initial plan was to go to my normal fishing spot, downtown Columbus. There is plenty of foot traffic in the “bar district” to provide a lot of opportunity to distribute tracts and get into witnessing encounters.

But last night, as I was on my way out, (without my usual partner), I decided I’d try to stay closer to home. A large part of the Saturday night downtown witnessing is the fellowship in the car. And the Marcus Cinema Pickerington is only a couple miles from my local church, so I am always hopeful that if a convert was made there, they would be able to come to Berean Baptist Church as well!

As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw the theater building emptying quickly! I figured a movie must have just finished. I hurriedly parked my car and jumped out, excited to share the gospel. Popped opened the trunk and, voila!, no tract bag. I ALWAYS keep a tract and bible bag in the car! Alas, not tonight. So I walked toward the theater entrance with only the tracts that are “customarily” kept in my coat, about 40 of them.

I was walking toward the large entrance when I saw a couple of young men coming out the “side” exit. I strolled over and offered them tracts. Their names were Markell and Anthony. They are juniors at the local high school. I asked them standard questions about what they think happens after death; Anthony has a church background. They were both happy to talk. Anthony had a “mildly” strange belief that you go to 1 of 3 heavens. He said there was a heaven for people who accept Jesus and remain sinless, a lesser heaven for people who accept Jesus and still sin, and a third heaven for everyone else: which he said was basically hell. I had never heard anything like this before. I asked them what happens to a good Hindu boy who is raised Hindu and never hears of Jesus, and they were quite sure that boy would go to Heaven. When I explained the contradiction in their own “theology,” they understood and seemed interested in resolving the conflict. They each admitted to several sins and understood all the courtroom analogies about the good judge and the Judge of the earth doing what is Right. I explained to them about the glorious grace of Christ and challenged them to read the book of John: just 1 chapter a day. They agreed. Hopefully, the Lord will save them by his gospel.

One of the interesting notes of this conversation was their belief that people are born “basically good.” I explained to them about Adam and Eve and original sin and why we are all born sinners. This gave me opportunity as well to talk about the virgin birth. Praise God for the only consistent worldview, a biblical one. I honest can’t imagine how many cultists keep track of the lies they believe. But getting to talk about Adam and Eve was a blessing, because it allowed me to bring up the fact that there is only one race, the human race. These two young men, as well as most everyone I met last night would be commonly considered “black” and I would certainly be called “white.” I hope that being able to communicate to them that I believe we are essentially cousins through Adam and Eve greases any friction they may sense due to “racial” problems we’ve brought upon ourselves in our culture.

I then ran into Chris and Tiara. Obviously a ‘teen date-night.’ Chris was wearing an ornate rosary. I stopped him and asked him what it meant to him. I was, admittedly, shocked when he had no idea what a rosary is really for or what it represents. His girl was proud to point at it and say it “has Jesus on it.” So I asked them who they thought Jesus was and eventually got them to go through a good person test. Chris had a lot of trouble admitting sin or even keeping eye contact with me. Tiara is a professed Christian. Neither of them had any idea how they would obtain forgiveness, but Tiara seemed to know it had something to do with repentance and Jesus. I left them with tracts and a challenge to believe the gospel.

I continued to hand out tracts and finally made it near the large theater entrance. TEENS EVERYWHERE. I approached a couple young boys named Dayquan and DeBron. Another Dayquan and a boy named Christian eavesdropped as well. These kids were extremely interested in the entire conversation. Even when distracted, they kept coming back to the conversation. Dayquan (1), after the gospel presentation, indicated that he had been baptized. It always amazes me when right after a gospel conversation, people seem to have no idea what I just told them. I reminded him that salvation was offered by grace through faith alone and I trust the Spirit of God can and will use His gospel to regenerate the hearts of these young men if they are of His elect. I wasn’t trying to boast, but at one point in the conversation I was trying to communicate how important this message is. I told them that the message itself, and their souls, was so important to me that I was missing time with my wife, “and the Lions game,” I said. At that point, I realized how really low I God had to reach to pull me out of the gutter…I am sortof a Lions fan. 😉

I was pleased that these guys were apparently friends with Chris and Tiara, who came back. They chuckled when they saw their friends talking to me. Praise God that they all allowed me to pray for them (as did Anthony and Markell) as we stood in a circle in public. I can tell you I would have NEVER let some freak pray for me in public when I was in high school!

Finally, I found another group of teens “milling about.” As I approached them I reaching into my pocket and pulled out my tracts. Upon seeing this, these guys (who must be from a rough neighborhood?), sorta “freaked out.” I realized what they thought and I made a joke about a guy “pulling out a piece in public.” One of the guys laughed and said, “M0t4er f***er just said ‘pull out a piece!'”

This isn’t exactly mind-blowing. Of course, I personally try to avoid profane language (eph 5:29), but what is most interesting to know at this point is that during the course of the conversation with these 4 guys (Montrel, Doug and two unnamed individuals), I found out they all go to the same church. Salvation is by grace, but I don’t imagine God’s people using that type of language, at least not for long. When I asked them about what happens when they die, they said that they either go to hell, or if they get the “holy ghost” they can go to Heaven. I asked them how to get the holyghost. They weren’t sure, but Montrel had recently gotten baptized, which he indicated was a step in the right direction. This was a tough bunch, distracted through the conversation, proud of the fact they were ‘presently lusting’ and disruptive to the point that I sternly chastised the one young man to simply be quiet. I told him that if he did’t care about his own soul, that was ok, but I cared about it and maybe his friends cared about their own. I thanked him afterward for controlling himself.

I finished off all my tracts and took my frozen fingers to my car and returned to my wife. It was really a wonderful experience, and I hope the Lord will save one or many of these young people. I was really impressed overall and had a fun time talking to young people. Thanks be to God for the opportunity and for His wonderful faithfulness.