Your most unique open air or witnessing story

sermonindex Sep 14, 2006

In his books Ray Comfort retells alot of his open air and witnessing experiences. He does this to inspire, teach and motivate others that they can do the same etc.
I would like to hear your most unique experiance in open air preaching or one on one witnessing. You can share more than one if you want.
Lastly, please NO MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING.
What that means is some will be tempted to critique the testimony saying it could have been done better this way or that seemed to harsh or you should try this in the future.
Lets just share it and be blessed by what we may learn from it. God bless, John

D

Dougmore Sep 14, 2006

Hi John,

I'm just getting into street preaching so I don't have any "good" stories.

Believers that I know got together and went into the party district in Richmond. Three of us went up to a restaurant and started preaching to the people waiting to get in. We preached for about thirty minutes and then a chef came out of the neighboring hotel. He was vary upset with us and ranted and raved for a while, then left. At about 8:30 I saw some employees to the hotel standing at the door commenting on our preaching. All of a sudden I heard the leaves in the tree above were I was standing shake. I thought that a bird was in the tree but it turned out to be an apple that missed the preacher and hit some branches. As I turned to see who through it I saw the chef, (in all his get-up), through another apple at me and then run into the hotel. It was more funny than anything else. 8-)

J

JennRich Sep 14, 2006

Once I was at home and heard the sound of fighting and arguing outside my window. I looked and it was a man and woman, one of them carrying a suitcase, and they were yelling at each other and crying. I quickly asked the Lord to help me, and then I rushed out there and began speaking with them. Either the man or woman was leaving the other (I can't remember which). I was able to tell them about God's love and they both seemed to "melt" right away. . . . they said they were Christians, but had not been faithful to church for awhile. We talked some more, then held hands and knelt right there on the sidewalk, and prayed that God would do a work in their lives. They ended up both calmly returning home together. I've never seen them again but I hope and trust they are walking with the Lord. Praise God for those witnessing opportunities that He just drops into our laps. . . I certainly didn't go out looking for it.

Z

ZekeO Sep 14, 2006

I think that this may be unique,

we were handing our tracks one morning as well as advertising some play that we were going to put on at our church. We decided to dress some of our crew up to demonstrate what we were saying. One member had a gorilla mask on and was leading a girl around with chains. She had a placard on her which said things like turn or burn etc.

Anyhow, we end up at this craft market, and a arty lady comes up to us from one of the stands and looks at the guy in the gorilla mask and the girl in chains and asks 'So, you guys into S&M' :-D It still amuses me as to what people can see. Well needless to say after an ice breaker like that we had a wale of a time.

B

brojsm Sep 14, 2006

I met a guy who was visiting our church named Johnny who had done some prison time and after he got out he got born again. He wanted to go street preaching and couldnt find anybody to go so I volunteered. My first time. So Johnny and I head to downtown St. Louis in a real 'bad' area, and we end up at this little corner diner. I will never forget as long as I live seeing this mans face literally glowing as he showed some black men his tatoo of 'White Supreme Race' on his gut and telling them that now he loved everybody! It made quite an impact.

sermonindex Sep 15, 2006

After a time of prayer our evangelism team went to a homosexual bar to preach. We set up about 20' from the front door on the sidewalk. We made sure that we did not block people from being able to walk down the sidewalk,(cops will get you on that).

I hopped on the step stool and started off. It began to draw a few curious then after about 5 min a few hecklers and contesters began which then drew in more people. We had several team members in the croud standing by. I started to get to drawn in to answering a couple of hecklers in front of me. I began to realize this and emmediatly lifted my arms a began to preaching agin in a booming voice. What I saw next was amazing to me. people from the street and further down the sidewalk came rushing inthe crowd went from 25 to about 65 in 3 minutes.I preached another 2 minutes then stepped down.

The members of the team went to work having very good one on one witnessing. After about 10 min Another brother ascended the ladder and began preaching and reading directly from the bible. A man from the back of the crowd forced his way straigt through towards the ppreacher. The man was yelling and pointing' put that book away, put that book away !He said it like five times and then he and the preacher proceeded top one on one discuss.
I saw another young man who was homosexual approach one of our other team memebrs and ask real humbly can i talk to you. He was able to minister to him as well.

The seed of God s word was planted that night becuase we cared more for them than we did our fears. God bless, John

sermonindex Sep 15, 2006

Jennrich, that is awesome. Thanks for sharing it.

sermonindex Sep 15, 2006

Hey Dougmore glad to hear your hitting the streets. Yea, I had barbecue sauce thrown at me and also spit on. small price to pay.

L

letsgetbusy Sep 16, 2006

The most interesting thing I have seen while/after witnessing, was this group of people when confronted on a Friday night.

We planned on hitting the local square when lots of lost people would be out. We got them alright. We prayed and walked up to the square, to find almost everyone either drinking or already drunk. My buddy who had been on mission trips, evangelism teams, etc, out of nowhere said, 'I am not feeling this, let's just walk around a little.' It was like hitting a spiritual wall. I definately think Satan was upset we showed up.

I just saw this group of people on the outskirts, and so I headed for them. My buddy said that his ears were ringing. He looked very disoriented, as I remember.

I began by asking them if I could speak with them about God, and they said something about, 'they were just there to drink some wine, etc.' I told them we weren't there to talk to them about their drinking. So I started asking the older lady if she had lied, stolen, etc. Everyone in the group was ignoring me but her. When I asked her if she had ever lusted, the youngest looking man in the group just cut in, "What's this all about guys?" Making it obvious he wasn't happy.

After telling them that sin would end them up guilty before God, and caused to be sent to hell, I gave them the gospel. They chatted with us a bit, and the tension seemed to ease. My buddy started speaking up, and after shaking hands with them, we both left.

To my surprise, the same younger guy that seemed so upset earlier waved to us as we were going from person to person in the square. We witnessed and handed out tracts and Bibles to many others. One man cut me off as soon as the conviction hit. Another told me I had gone far enough after asking him if God existed. A lady who could quote Scripture, and seemed godly at first, told me she could later be found in the bar. A bum asked me if we were the Jesus guys, and told me nobody wanted to hear what we were saying. A drunk guy holding a beer looked like he wanted to knock my buddy's head of when my buddy got to the 'repent' portion of his message. I felt like, for the most part, we needed to knock the dust off our feet.

On Sunday, my buddy calls me up, and tells me I will never guess what happened. Well, what do you know? The same guy that got so mad at us, saw my buddy at a Target, walked up to him, got his attention, shook his hand, and told him how much he apprectiated us taking the time to do what we were doing. After a conversation the man left in good spirits.

You never know who you are influencing. We won't see the majority of the fruit that sprouted of the seeds we planted until we are in eternity.

A

Azulfire Sep 17, 2006

I dont think this qualifys as a witness or open air preaching, but just last week I was driving and there on the corner was a young black man holding signs that said, Jesus is the way the light and truth, and he had a few others propped at the light, well an overwhelming sense of crying came over me,I dont know if it was grief, crying for the lost or what, I dont know and i dont know why.... so I stopped and bought him a bottle of water and went to talk to him, my fear was that he was a pan handler but he spoke the truth so convicting, I rejoiced when i left him, but i felt like crying and weeping in my car, To me it was a glimmer of hope of something bigger to come, I was amazed at the people who drove by were so encouraging honking and giving the thumbs up sign.......Michelle in Vancouver Washington

sermonindex Sep 17, 2006

~~[b]~~CURSED & KISSED[/b]

When going out into the highways and the byways to preach the gospel I receive many different reactions to the same message. On one occasion I was both kissed and cursed. I had heard that there was a public square in the city of Waterbury that I had never preached in before so I hopped on the bus alone and went to find it. When I arrived there I prayed and then set up my easel, and displays. I had gathered a nice sized crowd of mostly young people my age very quickly.

One girl after listening to the message for about five minutes had to leave. She came up to me and extended her hand as if she wanted to shake mine. When I extended my hand she took it and kissed it. She then looked at me and said "Good luck". A short time later in the same spot a man wearing a suit was getting so angry at me, he looked like fire would come out of his ears. He was with a friend who had been threatening me earlier. The nicely dressed man was yelling at me and falsely accusing me of all types of things. He then could take it no longer so he walked away in rage.

A few minutes later I noticed him in the corner of my eye. He had come back to listen more. God must had done something in his heart because when I said to the crowd "Jesus said 'unless you are born again you will by no means see the Kingdom of God" he looked stunned and then looked to the crowd and said "yea, that's true. I've read that." It was as if a light when off in his head and he understood what I was saying. Afterwards he came up to me, shook my hand and said "As a man I apologize for earlier." He then spoke with me and told me how he is going to change his life. He turned to his friend, the one who also threatened me earlier, and told him how he's going to get his life right. The lesson to be learned is that we must "speak to them and tell them, 'Thus says the Lord God,' whether they hear, or whether they refuse" and let God do the rest. No matter if we're in season or out of season let's share the gospel.

sermonindex Sep 19, 2006

Side note. I did an image search on yahoo with the two words "street preacher" you may see someone you know!

sermonindex Sep 19, 2006

Side note. I did an image search on yahoo with the two words "street preacher" you may see someone you know!

Yes, but have you made google's image page yet. That's when you know you are big time. :-D ;-)

-K_DAY

sermonindex Sep 24, 2006

This did't happen to me but to a pastor in olivehurst, Ca.

He was preaching on a street corner and he had a sighn sitting next to him something like,"Jesus is coming soon repent" Well this guy comes up to him starts yelling at him and picks up the sighn and breaks it across the light pole. The pastor looks at him and says "In the name of Jesus I rebuke you. Pastor said the guy just took off running as fast as he could the opposite direction and he never saw him again.
God bless, John