Battle Log

Christchurch (NZ) Team

Saturday, 19 October, 2019

Posted by Posted 21 October 2019, 7:08 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink

The Ellesmere A&P (agricultural and pastoral) Show is the first special outreach of the summer for the Christchurch (NZ) team.  We hire a trade site from which we share the gospel via flip charting and tracts.  The weather was great and we had many people going past our site.  And it was very encouraging having a big team of Christians involved with this outreach: if I counted correctly, there were nine of us in total (from various local churches, and different levels of experience) spread out over the day, sharing the load, and encouraging each other.

There were many conversations happening.  And to be honest the day was a bit of a busy blurr for me.  But that’s a good thing!  For next year, we might hire two sites side by side, I’m sure we could have had more conversations during the busy lunch time rush if we had more space!

I’ll probably let the photos do most of the talking, but here are two contrasting highlight conversations that come to mind:

I had an older Catholic guy stop to talk, who was a really sincere guy, but who was trusting in his goodness to get him to save him from hell.  It was a good conversation where I focused on getting him to understand justification by faith alone.  He seemed genuinely challenged.

But in contrast, I had another wonderful conversation with a young man who wanted to challenge me on this “God thing”, but ended up saying he couldn’t fault the logic.  I laboured with this guy to get him to understand justification by faith alone, while at the same time understanding the cost of following Jesus.  I was confident he understood, but as he was walking away, he made an interesting comment.  He said, “I’ll trust in Jesus' sacrifice for my sins, and then I’ll go and booze up with my mates!”  I pulled him back to re-explain that with faith in Christ comes a changed heart and repentance that leads to obedience.  I challenged him to repent and believe today - as he had no guarantee of having another.