Outreach!

Last night we did outreach downtown. Each guy room was paired up with a girl room because we were doing outreach from 8pm-10pm at night. Downtown gets super sketchy at night, way worse than anyplace I’ve ever been. After the groups were assigned, we split up into guy and girl pairs so we could talk to individuals or groups of people without intimidating them (and also so the girls would have a guy with them at all times). I paired up with a girl named Brooke from UNC-W. We had a stack of cards called perspective (we were the only ones who didn’t have solarium in our group!), so we went over it with one another to make sure we knew what we were going to be doing. We would ask a question and give them a stack of cards. They would pick the card that had their answer on it. For example, one question was “Who is Jesus?”. The card choices were: A great spiritual leader, A revolutionary, A Liar Lunatic or Legend, or Savior and Creator. We prayed that God would use us and give us words to speak in our conversations to come. We set out looking for people to talk to on the street, and we weren’t so successful at first. The first few people were too busy or not interested. Finally we found a man named Indiana. He was an atheist, but he was willing to talk. We didn’t get to talk very long (maybe 5 minutes) because his girlfriend came and wanted to leave. Next we talked to a mother in a Hispanic family. She believed that the purpose of life was to live for God and that he was our savior and creator. However, she believed that people were more good than bad and not broken or separated from God. We asked her that if she was to die now, how certain would she be that she’d go to Heaven. She told us she was 60% sure. We asked her about the other 40% and she said that she just didn’t know. We gave her a KGP (Knowing God Personally) pamphlet, but she said  she didn’t want to go over it there because she was going somewhere.

Next we talked to a man named Richard and his girlfriend. He was agnostic, and she didn’t talk very much. He was very open to talking to us (an hour and a half!), as we literally sat in the road in a parking spot in downtown. He was very willing to hear what we had to ask. He believed God was a good spiritual teacher, but not savior and creator. So we asked him, “How could Jesus be a good spiritual leader if He claimed to be God? Wouldn’t that make Him a liar if He wasn’t really God?”. Richard said he didn’t know how to answer that, but that he felt like the Bible was misinterpreted over the years (oh how I wish I would’ve had my research on manuscripts ready!). We also asked him, “Do you believe there is a truth?”, and he couldn’t see past the fact that other people in different religions can’t follow what they believe and have salvation. We asked him about what he thought about Jesus and the cross too. He didn’t feel like we were able to understand God because God is so beyond our knowledge. So we shared the KGP with him and his girlfriend. He really like Ephesians 2:8-9, which says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.” He said that was his problem. He said that he didn’t have faith. He said he’s trying to figure things out because he needs actual physical evidence. He used to be an altar boy in the Catholic Church and even went to seminary! He fell away from religion because he said he was swinging on a pendulum between hardcore Christianity and believing religion was for weak people. After going through the KGP, I asked them if they wanted to accept Christ, and he asked me to read the prayer. After, he told me that he didn’t believe it, but that he appreciated the fact that we said it was about a relationship with Jesus Christ, not a religion. I asked him if he had ever read More than a Carpenter, and he said he hadn’t. I think it would be a great book for him to read, so Brooke and I are going to try and mail him a copy or meet up with him again. God really moved downtown last night, and even though he didn’t come to accept Christ, I feel like a seed was definitely planted for God to work through his life.