This past weekend a group of about 50 bible institute students went to NYC to do open air evangelism. We started off at a church about 30 min. away from Times Square. After we unpacked the vans and bus we got in to five
groups. My group had 7 people in it, not including our team leader. We then got on the subway to head to Time Square for the evening. Our leader gave us some instructions and our boundaries and then we prayed and headed off in pairs.

Starting out I didn’t feel nervous about approaching people, since I’m used to that. But the fact that I’m presenting them with some information that has eternal ramifications is pretty intimidating and humbling at the same time. I started out just getting people to stop, and then handing them a gospel tract. After about 30 minutes my team leader came over and told me to look for people who were already standing around. He then pointed out several people and told me to go talk to them. So I did. I ended up having a couple 5 or 10 minute chats with people. I never got into a real deep conversation but the seed was planted and they all agreed to take a tract afterwards. As I was walking away I could see all of them reading the tracts, so at least they felt the need or interest to do that.

At about 10 o’clock we headed back to the church for the night. When we got back we were given jobs for the next morning so that we could pack up quickly and get back out on thestreets. We got to bed by 12 A.M. and then got up at 6:30 A.M. and started packing up and setting up tables for breakfast. At 8 A.M. we had a meeting and were given better instructions on how to improve our witnessing “abilities”. Around 10:30 A.M. we headed back to the subway and split into two groups. One group went to a park and the other group, the one I was in, headed to the Bronx. We went to a smaller neighborhood similar to what you would find in Rochester and Buffalo. The environment was much more relaxed compared to the previous night. More people were milling around and willing to talk. I decided I would pull out some of my old sleight of hand and use it as a conversation starter. I got to talk to about 20 people that afternoon. Not very many people are willing to turn down a small 17 yr. old who wants to show them a “magic” trick. Once again none of my conversations went very deep and I only got to present the whole gospel twice, but I did hand out a lot more tracts and people were much friendlier and seemed to have a genuine interest in what I had to say. Around 2 PM we headed to a park down the road to have lunch and relax. We all chatted about our experiences and had a good time just relaxing. Finally we went back to our spots and witnessed for 45 minutes or so before we packed up and headed back so we could go home.

Overall the weekend was a great experience, especially being my first time in NYC. I’m so thankful we got the opportunity to share the loving and saving power of Jesus Christ with so many people. We shared the gospel over 200 times as a whole and had 20 people make professions of faith.

Tags: college, evangelism, NYC, update, wolbi, word of life