A Night at the Fair

I believe the church should be Jesus’ hands and feet by loving the community through service as well as the obvious of sharing the Good News about Jesus Christ. These acts of love often move the world to hear our message. And bring the message of reconciliation is what every christian is called to do. As a church we do many of these mission/service opportunities via our small groups throughout the year often joining groups that have already organized and set things up. Yet, a few times a year we go hard-core, old-school whatever you want to call it, and we take our 8x8 hot-dog-selling-looking trailer (we lovingly call the Godmobile) out to places like the Fair and just try to share the Gospel with people. It is engaging, but non-confrontational. We don’t argue with people. We simply share Jesus without fear. We understand that if one person gets saved that it was a result of the Holy Spirit. We understand that some may be hearing the Gospel for the first time and it’s not harvest time. In our loving approach, we have no problem with people that come angry with God or hell-bent on going to hell. The agnostic is not a problem, neither is they young guy that tries to act like he is a satanist. You see, we go in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Most of us are extremely uncomfortable doing this and slightly scared to death. We are not the group that yells at people, and we understand just because our booth has questions about eternity on it; people likely have a bad first impression of us. Yet, once they meet us it is a different story. We are real people with our own stories of God’s glory sharing the great love story, the great redemption story. I’ve been doing this probably over ten years now, so I have a clue of what is going to happen. It’s like the Scripture says, “some will jeer, some will receive Christ, and some will say ‘maybe later’.” So on the ride over with my team, I wanted to give them an idea of what it would be like. Suddenly on the ride over, I realize I had a car-load of rookies. They had never done this before. They were like lambs before the slaughter (haha). Yet, they were doing what Jesus said, “Go and tell.” I told them that you will see people primarily from ages 11-20ish open to hearing the Gospel. I told them that most often they will come in packs, and you will have to dish out the Gospel like a fast food window, because Satan will have his hand on one in their group trying to drag them away from the Good News. I told them that it would be possible that two, three or more people might get saved at the same time depending on God’s will of course. (We don’t manipulate or try to talk people into false conversions.) I told them that you would have Christians walk by and see the sign and give you a thumbs-up, and people angry at God would pass by and curse or give you another hand-signal. And I told them, sadly, the people that will be the biggest pain would be christians that want to push their “pet” verses on you. All of these things happened, and God even welcomed many into His kingdom on this night.---We were all glad we went. My favorite part was watching these rookies become seasoned veterans in one night at the Fair. It was awesome to see the Holy Spirit work through these warriors. It gave me a chance to share Jesus with some people in mass quantities. It gave me a chance to represent Christ in a way that giving away bottle waters just doesn’t satisfy. It made me come home and brush up on Scripture as I felt like I mishandled some situations (particularly dealing with cults and fanatical christians). But it was good for me to run into that. I got to meet people that are totally different than me, thereby understanding where the world is coming from. So perhaps, I can do better in my gospel presentation in the future. It made me hurt for a lost, desperate, dying world as I saw them and heard them face to face. ---After I walk away, I’m always glad that I went, and I readily know that I will be scared to death the next time I go. That’s just the way it is.