John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

prayer

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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2017 Penn State @ Ohio State Outreach Report

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6 men were able to labor October 28 for the Lord and lost in Columbus Ohio. Caleb Davenport, Kurtis Gould, Travis Jackson and I preached while Chase Vendley and Kenton Gould handed out tracts. It was a sub-40 degree day which started out rainy. But we prayed earnestly that God would keep the rain away and He graciously answered the prayer. We drove to Ohio State at 11am with windshield wipers on, and by the time I parked my van the rain had stopped and didn’t restart. I want to publicly thank the Lord for his kindness to us that day. It was the first cold day, but that is something we are used to in Ohio. The way I see it, if fans will go to the game, I will too. Although I immediately ordered a box of 40 hand warmers when I got home for future games!

On the way there, I asked Kurtis, “Why would you to want to go evangelize in freezing rain?” He responded, “The same reason as when the weather is nice, the get the gospel out.”  <<–Praise the Lord for that faithfulness!

Here are some pictures and commentary about the day, with a special providential surprise at the end. If you click the pictures it will open larger versions of them in a new tab which you can close to return to the article. We started, as always, with the singing of gospel hymns and prayer.

Above you can see a photo of Caleb preaching with Kurtis standing by him. We like to have someone near the preacher, not only in case of an type of physical incident, but also to help if needed. For example, if a person is clearly trying to obstruct the preaching, that person can distract a person who is just causing the preacher problems. Or if the preacher decides to stop preaching to talk to someone who is responding to the gospel, that person can begin preaching. We only have a few hours to preach so we try to fill it up.

Above you can see a picture of the crowd. Basically from 2-3 hours prior to kickoff until 15 minutes before kickoff there is a constant stream of people like this. Every 5-7 minutes the crowd moves along as the police operate the stoplights.

In the below picture you can actually see Chase handing out tracts. There is a teeny tiny arrow pointing to Chase. Click to picture to see it. You can also see just to the right of the middle of the photo there is a street vendor selling knit caps. His set up for the caps is in the shape of a cross. He was mocking the gospel and shouting “Be saved…from the cold!” But in his mocking many people heard “Be saved!” and we rejoice that God may use that to cause His elect to think about their need of salvation. And we also know that this man was in earshot of several hours of preaching, and Travis made sure he received a tract. May Jesus receive the reward!

In this photo, Caleb is preaching and you can see the man on the right reading a tract he was give by Chase or Kenton. It has become rare in my experience to see people actually stop to read the tracts (although I still hope some read them just not in my sight). So I told Travis, “Why don’t you go try to talk to him?” Below you can see Travis engaging the man with the gospel. At one point the man was actually weeping. Travis has a kind heart and a peaceful spirit. Pray that this man might receive Christ or if he already has that he would maybe come back and join us in reaching others!

In the photo below this man came up while Kurtis was preaching and asked Kurtis for his favorite Scripture. As men, we can only judge outward appearance, and not hearts, but this man appeared oppositional to Kurtis in his tone and posture. When Kurtis didn’t immediately tell him his favorite passage, the man said something like “There are a lot of false prophets out here. If you’re going to do this, you need to know the Word.”

I’m protective of my team, maybe to a fault, and Kurtis is only 17 years old, so I stepped over and tried to reason with the guy. I told him that Kurtis not having a favorite scripture off the top of his head was no indicator that Kurtis is a false teacher or doesn’t know the Word of God. The man was unkind and made some more comments which could only be construed as rude, while telling us he was just trying to inspire Kurtis. It was odd, but I was bothered that the preaching was interrupted for such a strange encounter.

After a minute, Kurtis told the guy he likes Philippians. We explained to the man that although he said he was trying to help us it just didn’t come across as supportive. These are the kinds of things you encounter regularly. Questions weigh on your mind with each encounter like “Should we have just had another person start preaching and let Kurt engage the fellow?” “Should I have kept out of it and let Kurtis handle it?” “Was I kind in my responses to him or too accusatory?”

As I said earlier, I do not want the preaching to stop and even a seemingly honest question from someone can interrupt the preaching to the point where many walking by will not hear the gospel. At the same time, the soul in front of us matters also, we we try to be strategic and wise and we hope that God will grant us wisdom and discernment! Pray for us, will you?

One thing that was notable to me that day was that I did not see a particular ticket scalper who I usually see. I have been going to the same corner for years now, and I have gotten to know various vendors and scalpers. One of them I even recognized when I was at a different event where he was selling tickets and he recognized me too and hugged me. Well, I did not see him this Saturday and it actually disappointed me.

But that evening, I went to a local place called Wingstop to get my wife and I some wings. As I got out of my car, I saw that same scalper! He said hello and hugged me and I asked him where he was that day and he said he was at a different location. We chatted for a moment and I found out his name and that we have at least one mutual friend from his church. Then as I was getting ready to pick up my order, he stepped up and paid for my chicken wings. I thanked him and he said, “You bless a lot of people, so I’m blessing you right now. Keep it up.” Praise the Lord for his providential timing and the gift of chicken wings for my bride and me!

One thing you can consider is that when you watch the games, you can look at the faces of the fans and know that many of them received the gospel. As I watched fans storm onto the field after OSU’s comeback victory, all I could think was “that’s my mission field.” Pray for a harvest, dear Christian!

Finally, I uploaded this video to give people an idea of what it is like preaching. There are distractions galore: sirens, people periodically shouting, and a constantly moving crowd at sporting events.

We ought pray for preachers of righteousness that the Holy Spirit would give them wisdom and unction to preach as He would have them preach.

 

2017 Arnold Report – 1

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The Arnold Classic is an annual athletic event held in Columbus, OH which attracts a large number of people from all over the world. For several years in a row we have gone to the central location for the event and preached Christ crucified, handed out tracts and engaged people in conversations.

Here is a multi-part post where I will share with you some of the stories from this weekend’s evangelistic outreach. I am hoping to make this series educational for others.

Allow me to introduce you to our team of evangelists. From left to right in the front row Pam, Kenton, Alexandra, then me. In the back row are Dave, Luke, Nick and Kurtis. You will notice that our team has 4 teenagers and one almost teenager! Praise the Lord for giving these young people a desire to see souls hear about Christ.

The day started long before March 4. We spent days and weeks praying, announcing the event at church and studying the Bible so that we would be ready. The night before and morning of the event I was charging my speaker, packaging tracts, finding DVD movies and watching the weather report!

We met at our church at about 11am on March 4. Due to there being 8 of us, we borrowed a generous brother’s van which seats 8. Right before leaving the church for downtown Columbus, our pastor prayed that the Holy Spirit would go before us and change hearts, something we cannot do.

On one sad note, two dear brothers who were scheduled to go with us could not make it due to illness. One of them was sick and the other couldn’t come because of how that affected him. This is very common! Pray for your outreaches and those of folks you know.

Click to read part 2..

Responding Like a Pharisee

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Last month I received a card in the mail from Legacy Church here on the east side of Columbus, OH.

I posted a couple tweets with screen shots as you can see below.

 

 

 

I received one particular reply which I wanted to respond to in a blog post.

 

 

 

 

I want to give Lisa Manning the benefit of the doubt. Even though I don’t think she’s asking an honest question (I believe she’s making a point in the form of two questions if you include her hashtag), I want to respond graciously, explaining a few of my own thoughts.

First of all, let’s take a look at this statement

What if one person gets saved or changed their life because they change their thinking?

Change Their Thinking

It seems Lisa has deftly understood that I do not agree with the concept of the mailing I received. I do not think that man’s problem is that our thinking is negative, thus pulling us from our goals and potential.

So, in response to the second part of Lisa’s question, “what if someone changed their life because they changed their thinking?” my answer is that I don’t really care, unless of course that thinking was changed from whatever a person thinks to thinking God’s thoughts, which we know according to His Word.

1 Cor 1:11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual

If somehow a person changed their life because they changed their thinking, apart from salvation in Christ and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, although those changes could be positive changes, it is a not the purpose of the church to help people better their lives with better thinking. It is our purpose to preach God’s Word to people and let them fall under the conviction of the Holy Spirit where the only real helpful change occurs (cf Phil 3).

What if one Person Gets Saved?

Next, let’s consider the first part of Lisa’s question. What if a person changed their thinking and got saved? This sounds great on the surface.

In fact, don’t we always say, “such and such sacrifice would be worth it if it helps just one person?”

Well, let’s take Lisa’s tweet in context. She is recognizing that I am opposed to the use of the crude vulgarity on a church mailing. And instead of defending it as a righteous and good practice, she proposes that maybe it will attract someone who ends up saved. Either that or she recognizes that someone may come to church because they want to have more positive thinking, but find Christ while there.

This sounds OK, until we substitute some other verbiage to see if it makes logical sense. Let’s say we have a stripper pole at a church meeting, find some beautiful ladies willing to share what God’s blessed ’em with and invite men from the area to come and enjoy “God’s creation.” Sounds despicable, doesn’t it?

But what if one person gets saved?

“What if one person DOES get saved?” I’d ask.  Who cares? What bearing does it have on the morality of the act? None. Zero. The point is this, someone hearing the gospel and getting saved is a wonderful act of God’s mercy – but whether or not that occurs has no logical bearing on whether your method of getting the gospel to them was legitimate.

I would go so far as to say that if you are willing to sin, follow methods NOT prescribed by God for dispensing His Word, or use language NOT becoming of a Christian (Eph 4:29) in order to get the gospel to someone, then you probably are not saved, and you are just practicing a religion you call Christianity, with a god you call Jesus who forgives people of their sins…to assuage your own sin guilt.

Am I a Pharisee?

So does all that make me a pharisee? The implication here is staggering to me because of what pharisees were in Scripture (outside God’s kingdom). Lisa’s tweet goes from an honest question -> to a hashtag which effectively labels me as outside the kingdom of Heaven.

This is a big deal to me because Lisa seems to come from the easy believism camp of Christianity – which is nearly indiscernible from Universalism. My point is this, she seems to be almost a universalist, but she draws a comparison from me to the very people Jesus called a “brood of vipers!” (Mt 23:33)

Of course, maybe Lisa didn’t mean it so literally analogous to biblical pharisees as I took it. Maybe she was just asking me if I was being legalistic or if I was unrighteously judging (John 7:24).  I will leave that to you, the reader to decide. But remember, if you judge me to be unrighteously judging for passing any judgement at all, you are caught in your own trap.

I appreciate the good folks who wrote this post which sums up the problem with playing the pharisee card. I strongly suggest you read it.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, we need to be a holy people in a wicked and perverse generation. We need to do things the way God has instructed in His Word and trust Him with the results. And we need to keep in mind when we judge others that we ourselves are not committing the same errors we are correcting them for.

Jonah’s Jaunt from Joppa

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Jonah is one of the more interesting saints we read about in God’s Word. His behavior and thoughts expose us to contradictions which can make us uncomfortable. The short book buried in the ‘lesser-read’ section of the Old Testament has many themes about our immutable and longsuffering Savior and Lord, the truths of which ought to bring you to worship.

Here is the audio of my Jonah 1 sermon. I will post Jonah 2 soon. Lord willing, Jonah 3 & 4 will be preached May 22 and I’ll post audio after.

On Praying ‘Hard’

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I can no more adequately explain to you the difference between the way an apple tastes and the way a pear tastes than I can explain the difference between ‘praying hard’ and ‘just praying’; but I know which one I’m experiencing when I taste of it.