Battle Log
Sunday, 24 January, 2021
Posted 24 January 2021, 4:46 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink.jpg)
A wonderful weekend of outreach for the Christchurch (NZ) team.
A team of two on Saturday morning in Cashel Mall and Cathedral Square. The foot traffic was a bit light at the start, but it picked up as the outreach progressed. It was also unfortunate that there were windy gusts at times. The highlight chat occurred during one of these gusts, so strong it nearly knocked the flip chart over even with me holding it; and it made turning the pages hard - yet it didn’t put the three young men off hearing the law and the gospel - the oldest one was particularly engaged (whom had been involved with the Ratana church in his past).
In the afternoon, I was online for a few hours. 10 chats, including:
- A Muslim.
- A young girl passionate about her atheism! It was great engaging with her.
- A wonderful chat with a young lady (whom I couldn’t see - only hear) who I really had to labour till she grasped the gospel.
- A ‘Christian’ kid, who was mucking around, and yet stayed to hear the law and the gospel.
- A chat with a Christian kid who gained gospel clarity.
- An interesting chat with a lady who only spoke Spanish, yet using translation tools we were able to communicate.
- A Jewish guy who heard the law and the gospel. His sticking point was, “a Christian can do anything then”. Actually, we don’t want to as per Romans 3:31
- A fascinating chat with a guy who couldn’t fault the logic of the gospel and yet rejected it - wanting to be his own God.
On Sunday afternoon I was very encouraged to be in a team of six - including two newbies. The weather was great, and there were lots of people out and about. We split into pairs to engage with the gospel - flip chart, tracts, and walk up.
My first encounter was a follow up with a young man who seems to be responding to the gospel. He can articulate the gospel, and there seems to be change in his life. Yet, there is a desperate need for discipleship. I challenged him to get knitted into a church and to actually contact me in this regard.
I had a number of great walk up opportunities. The first with a guy on a skateboard. The next one was cool: two guys - one not interested, the other was. The one that was caused the other to wait and he became engaged as well. At least twice I heard the comment: “that makes sense” as we went through the law and the gospel. And then, suddenly the conversation was over - they didn’t want to miss their movie start. Yet they went with the seed of the gospel and tracts to read later.
It was great watching Andy engage with group after group. Eventually he fell into a long conversation with a group of kids that kept changing - kids would join the conversation, then leave, while others would join and leave. There seemed to be a couple of them that were deep in the conversation and stayed for the whole time - one girl in particular seemed very engaged. The chat was still going when I left to join the team online!
It was great to see the newbies have opportunities to witness gospel conversations and be encouraged!
I made it home in time for online training Sunday. I was paired up with Javier (in California) and we had a great time watching each other's gospel chats and discussing afterwards. Javier had a long chat with a young (lonely) man. Javier did such a wonderful job in clearly explaining the gospel and working through his suite of checking questions. It’s so wonderful seeing these young ones learning to so clearly articulate the gospel. Raise up an army Lord!
My two chats were both with Muslims. One in America, the other in Jordan. They were both very open to hearing the gospel.
Praise God - all glory to God alone!
