Battle Log
Tuesday, 28 January, 2020
Posted 29 January 2020, 5:13 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink
Sunday afternoon was the first outreach after the completion of the NZ Summer Mission in Christchurch & Dunedin (you can read the reports from the mission here).
It was a nice day, and there were lots of people in Cashel Mall. But for whatever reason, it was really difficult to get a conversation started (in stark contrast to my experience in Dunedin). Oh, how I miss being in Dunedin! My three daughters were with me, and it was a good lesson in perseverance for them. Evangelism is not easy - but Jesus is worthy! Yet some tracts were received and I did manage to get into one conversation.
Mike joined us later in the outreach, and armed with his new mini flip chart, he went off in search of a conversation (paired up with Haley). He came back with a wonderful report of a conversation with a tourist. He was able to go through the whole flip chart with him - and the checking questions really helped the guy to understand the gospel.
On Tuesday I was doing some letterbox dropping before heading to Riccarton for the late afternoon outreach, when I was challenged by an older lady about what I was doing. I looked up and informed her that I was putting gospel tracts in letterboxes. She asked what a gospel tract was, so I explained that I was a Christian and that I wanted people to know the good news about Jesus - and a gospel tract communicated that message. I was very surprised by her response. I was expecting her to tell me not to put one in her box, but instead she was delighted! She was doing some gardening, but was obviously very keen to talk, and so I sat down to oblige.
She had a Catholic background, and figured that her goodness would get her to heaven. So she was deeply challenged when I showed her what Jesus taught about goodness. She kept changing the subject to political issues, and how bad the world was, and how much people like me are needed. But I kept gently bringing the subject back to the problem of her own sin. She wasn’t open to a full gospel conversation, and so didn’t hear the good news. But she did receive a tract. As I moved on, I came to the end of the road, and crossed to come back down the other side to deliver tracts. I was going to wave to her, but to my surprise she was gone. I hope she went inside to study the tract.
The last time I had been in Riccarton was two weeks prior during the NZ Summer Mission. There were about ten Christians there and I was amazed at how many conversations the team were able to have. Now I was back on my own, and I struggled a bit to get conversations started. Yet tracts were received, and over the outreach I was able to have three good gospel conversations.
The first was with a young lady, who was intrigued by my question about the afterlife, and stayed to hear the gospel via the big flip chart. The second was with a guy (pictured walking away reading a tract) whom I had to really labour with to get him to understand the way to heaven.
The last was a wonderful conversation with another young lady, who had some Christian influence in her life, but had not really been able to sew it altogether. Many times through the conversation I was able to observe the penny drop as she joined the dots and understood the gospel. She would say things like: “It’s making sense now!” (multiple checking questions confirmed this). At the end she was challenged to respond to the gospel. She was keen to accept a free Bible and start reading it, and wanted recommendations for a youth group. We talked about church options for her area, she also received a contact card for my local church.
