Hi Everyone

September is Missions Month at Calvary Wellington!

And today marks the first day of Wellington Outreach week. It started with training. Glen Richards led the training, assisted by Andy Barlow & Roger Spicer. It was a great turnout (around 20) ,and a great time to learn from the pros!

Glen spoke of the importance of using the law in evangelism. He also touched on how to show that God exists using logic. This bought about a lot of debate and questions from the floor. After the break Glen walked through a typical gospel conversation, demonstrating via use of the Good Person Test flipchart. It was a great time of fellowship and learning.

 After lunch we had the chance to put the training into action, by hitting the streets around Queensgate Mall in Lower Hutt.

We made sure that the least experienced people were teamed up with someone with more experience. I ended up being by myself for the afternoon, and had a few notable chats:

A young lady at the Bunny St bus stop. She was engaged to start with, and was happy to talk about eternal things. Then she seemed distracted and got a bit giggly. Then I realised that one of her friends was pulling faces at her inside the mall! She held her composure throughout the conversation, and answered all my questions. She knew what her eternal destiny would be without Christ, and what she needed to do to avoid her hell punishment, so had to leave her in God’s hands. She did take a tract, and thanked me for the chat.

Young High School boy. This was a great chat! Humble guy, who was a bit embarrassed. But he agreed that he would go to hell if he died, and he accepted that there was only one way to go to heaven, through Jesus taking his hell punishment for him. All his goodness was worthless as a bribe to God on judgement day. Yes, he knew that, but he said he would think about it. I told him not to wait too long, as he didn’t know when he was going to die – then it would be too late!

Group of three teens – another great chat. I thought they were going to goof out, but to my surprise, two of them stuck around to hear me out. They both thought that God would just forgive them, and it came as a shock to hear that wouldn’t work, just like an earthly judge wouldn’t just forgive without a payment for their crimes. They both thanked me, and said they would think about it seriously, which is all I can ask! 

Abusive guy at Queens Dr bus stop – this started out nicely, but didn’t end well. I greeted him as per normal, with the usual afterlife question. He said he had done some horrible stuff and been in prison, so would go to hell. He said he was that way because of family abuse and violence, which had been passed down through generations. Unfortunately that triggered something inside him, and his demeanour changed suddenly. Out came a string of abuse and threats. He said if I called the cops they would take five minutes to get here, and he could kill me in just one. At that point I threw my hands up and backed off. He said very colourfully that if I didn’t get the Jesus stuff out of his face he would make sure I wasn’t able to tell anyone anything ever again. I walked back to the protection of a couple of the other team nearby – Mike, Di and Andy. I told Di what happened. The guy walked past us, accusing me of spoiling his afternoon – he was going to the pub but now he was too angry. I just shook it off at the time, but later realised the seriousness of the situation, and became a bit shaky. I was just grateful to God that He kept me safe!

So it was an awesome day out, and a great start to missions week. I’ll post some more when I get my notes together for the following Monday to Friday.

Blessings

Craig.