Since March, we’ve been planning an outreach in The Colony, TX along with First Baptist Church Hebron from the Fourth of July weekend. The events were to take place on Saturday, the 3rd. We had been to the park a few weeks prior to map out where we would set up to hand out water and Gospel tracts and preach the Gospel. The weather did not cooperate. When we realized the rain was headed that way, we moved up our meeting time and headed out to the park thinking we could get some tracts and preaching out before the weather hit. However, about 15 minutes after we arrived, it started to rain. And, not just rain, but a good old fashioned Texas downpour. We took cover and started praying for a backup plan. Mande was checking the weather map via her phone and also different towns to see where there might be another July 4th celebtration we could go to. I pulled out my phone and saw an email from Jon Speed. He had sent a message that Tim Crawford was going to Southlake Town Square. Mande confirmed the radar looked clear. I called TIm to verify they were still going. So we headed to Southlake.
When we arrived we grabbed about 500 tracts and headed out on the streets to meet up with Tim. We found him and he said, “we are out of tracts.” He had brought about 20 youth group members to teach them how to evangelize. So we gave them the tracts we had and then headed back to the car to get the rest of the ones that we had there. When we returned, we loaded up Tim’s team again.
Then we got to work handing out tracts. There were people everywhere. As we handed out tracts most would say “thanks!”
I walked up to a group of teens and handed them Bucket List tracts. Then I asked them “if you had one week to live, what things would be on your list of things to do before you die?” I thought the eyes of one girl were going to pop out of her head when I asked this. We had a good discussion and it turned out several of the kids were Christian. Then one boy asked me, “why does God send some people to hell.” So I talked with him alone and explained that because we have broken God’s Law that we deserve to go to hell and that God is just in sending us there. But, if we repent and trust Christ then He will give us eternal life. He thanked me for talking to him.
I had two really great conversations with two different groups of teens by handing them “can you name ten beers” tracts. The two conversations went a little different. Both groups named the ten beers. The first named all ten of the commandments too. The second group, got stuck on 8 commandments. What was neat was that as they tried to get the last two, they would stop people who were walking by to ask them “do you know the second commandment?” I was giving tracts to those that came by as well. Eventually I told them the last two commandments and shared the Gospel with them. The first group was soundly saved, members of the same youth group. We had a wonderful time of fellowship. The second group was mostly Christians. One Catholic girl claimed to have actually kept the Ten Commandments. I tried to explain to her that “all have sinned” but she clung to her religion.
At that point we went to grab a hamburger for dinner. While we were eating, fireworks began going off right across the street. (See picture above) We watched most of the show then headed towards the car and watched the end of the show from the parking garage.
All it all, it seems that over 3,000 tracts we distributed by our group. Please pray that all these seeds take root!
Pastor Ben reported to me that when they got home from Southlake that The Colony fireworks were just ending. So they went over there and handed out tracts and did a little preaching. Then on Sunday (4th) they went to Lewisville and handed out another 500 tracts and preached for an hour. Praise God!
Hi Carl,
Saturday night at Southlake was awesome. I learned alot about working in a larger crowd like that, and also from observing some of the things you do to witness to people.
Sunday night at the Lewisville Fireworks Show at Vista Ridge Mall was a completely different dynamic. At Southlake, there were crowds of people everywhere like at the State Fair, but at Vista Ridge, everyone just parked in their vehicles in the expansive parking lots all around the mall, and just waited for the fireworks.
People either sat in the back of their pick-up trucks or SUVS, or sat on lawn chairs or blankets around their vehicles. At first, David and I weren't sure to handle it, but then we just started going up and down the rows of parked vehicles and groups, and within the first ten minutes we had burned through our first stack of fifty tracts!
It was pretty amazing – everyone was very receptive, and the whole night I think maybe one or two people didn't want a tract. Within an hour, we had gone through all 500 of our tracts! I could have kicked myself for not bringing more tracts.
But as it turned out, it all worked out for the best anyway. We did have a random assortment of tracts left in our pockets, and we handed all those out on the way back to our vehicle.
By the time we got back to our vehicle, the sun was starting to slowly sink, David had been itching to do some open-air preaching, so we climbed up on the tailgate of our car, and read through First John together, alternating chapters between us. I then preached from John 8:32 and Isaiah 45, "Look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be saved" – it was a great opportunity to preach the Law and the Gospel to a part of the crowds, and to urge them to repent of sin and look to Christ for salvation.
We had a couple of people who seemed to be paying close attention, got some "air" high fives, one guy through a tract at us as we were leaving, and the police cruised by on bikes a couple of times to see what was up.
BTW, on the way home from Vista Ridge, David and I discovered that Castle Hills was having their own fireworks show – these things are just everywhere – Saturday night was Southlake, The Colony, and Addison; Sunday night we had our choice between Lewisville, Flower Mound, Frisco, and Plano – these are such great opportunities to get out the gospel.
I would be very interested in praying with you and talking with you about how we could recruit and train more teams to get all these events covered next year.
Amazing weekend – thanks for leading us brother!
Ben
Thanks, Ben, for the detailed account of your time out. I look forward to praying about your ideas for next year. We'd need a leader for each site and then work on putting together more teams. I'm game. Let's be in prayer about it.