my dad has preached the Gospel for over 40 years now. and growing up we traveled the country having tent revivals and open air meetings all over the place!
when my dad first began preaching he was praying and he tells the story this way...
"I felt called of God to preach. I had a passion for the lost to hear the Good news of the Gospel, but had no churches to preach in. So one day I went behind the old barn by the house and knelt down on a make-shift altar from a bale of hay and told God that I wanted to obey him and preach but had no where to preach. then God spoke to my spirit and said; everyday you walk by the general store, the county Jail, the courthouse....and God told me to preach the Gospel to everyone, everywhere not just to church folk who came to church each week."
that's the way my dad told the story. I was not born yet when that took place but as a child I saw the effects of that day. my dad ministered on skid row for years. he preached in missions, on the streets, in city parks, and many years in tent revivals across the country as well. He has an old black Bible that his mother bought him when he first got saved and it is stained with blood where a man punched him in the mouth for preaching on the streets of Pittsburg, Pa. and he tells of the time he was preaching in Chicago to whinos' in a mission and a man who had been a successful business man and family man had lost everything and ended up drunk and on the streets. he got saved and worked with my dad after being saved for a year or so. then years later they met again and he had his family back and was pastoring a very successful church in Illinois.
there are, of course, many other stories he tells....God is Awesome, isn't he?
but first...he had to obey the call of God to preach the Gospel to every creature.
he always made a point to work with local churches while traveling as well so that when people recieved the Lord they would be directed to a home church to be taught and discipled in the things of God!
I've known evangelist who spend a lifetime going from church to church and preach to the same group of people year after year and I always find myself thinking that the New-Testament preachers took thier message to the world not only the church....it seems that is where the Gospel needs to be preached....to them who are lost. I know there is a work in the church for teaching, preaching, and exortation....but let us not think that all the preaching in the church will ever take the place of preaching the Gospel to the lost....on there turf.
"Take it to the streets!"