Kentucky Derby Outreach 2014

It was a real privilege and an honor to witness at the Kentucky Derby this year. 21 men and one lady came from around the country to an outreach put together by Bill Adams with Sports Fan Outreach International. It was a wonderful outreach and the Holy Spirit really moved at this event. We arrived Thursday night May 1, 2014 and we were blessed to hear from Reverend Al Baker, a Presbyterian church planter from Alabama and also from Dr. Hershael York with Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The teaching was fantastic. (By the way Rev. Baker joined us open-air preaching on Friday and Saturday and Dr. York told us that a deacon from his church was collegiate athlete many years ago and that the deacon had been saved in college because of an open-air preacher).

Then Friday morning we were all up and ready for prayer time from 6 am to 7 am and we were at Churchill Downs by 8 am. We stayed until 4 pm that day, preaching, getting into one to ones and handing out tracts. We had a great day. In the afternoon, Aaron preached and a gentleman listened intently the whole time. Afterwards, the gentleman came over to Aaron and they visited one to one for around 30 more minutes and he asked Aaron “what must I do to be saved?” Aaron made sure that he counted the cost before he came to Christ. His conversion seemed genuine and we hope and pray that it was. Jalverk was so excited that he wanted to share the Gospel right way. Aaron gave him some tracts and he jumped right out started handing them out.

The same time Aaron was witnessing to Jalverk, Greg Marlin, was talking to Safwan, a Muslim from Pakistan. Greg had a great conversation with him and the man agreed to read the Gospel of John. Greg and him became Facebook friends right there on the spot in order to stay in touch with each other. Bill Adams and Rev. Baker both witnessed with our group part of the time and another gentleman joined us for part of the day on Friday, but mainly it was John Coble and Joe Conkle along with the three of us from Springfield, MO.

While Aaron and Greg were having great one to one conversations, Joe was really in a good conversation too. So John was preaching and I was across the street handing out tracts. A young lady came up and started talking to John and it turned more into a one to one instead of preaching. Since there was “dead air,” I came over and started preaching from Ephesians 2:1-10. The whole purpose of this passage was to get people to see that they are spiritually dead in their trespasses and sins when they are unsaved and that we cannot earn salvation. I was nearing the end of my message and pleading with people to repent and put their faith in Jesus when two young men stood right in front of me with beers in their hands. They just stood there grinning at me, so when I was calling people to repentance, I pointed right them and said God can grant you repentance and faith in Jesus too.

They both hollered out that they do repent. They said that they were Catholics and that they confess to their priest all the time. So I looked at the one to my left and I asked him if he was a good Catholic and he said that he was. He said that he goes to church every Sunday. So I said since you are a good Catholic, are you working your way to heaven and he said that he was. I told him that I just read in Ephesians 2:8-9 that we can’t work our way to heaven. He kept yelling back that he was a good Catholic and that he was doing all the things that he was supposed to do.

Meanwhile his friend started yelling that Jesus died so that we can sin. I told, him no, Jesus died for our sins; if we turn from those sins and trust Him. He kept yelling back that Jesus died so that we can sin. They kept getting louder and I’m not proud of this because I got in the flesh at this point and I started yelling louder too. After a little bit they got frustrated and walked away.

At that point, Jared came over to me and said that he was a Christian, but that we shouldn’t be trying to push our beliefs on others. He was intoxicated and cussing as we talked and I kept trying to get him to see that we are to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. I took him to several Scriptures, but I don’t think he ever really got it. In fact I was showing him some verses in Matthew chapter 7 and I pointed out about good trees and bad fruit. He told me that those were some of his favorite verses in the Bible. I told him that those verses backed up my point, that he couldn’t claim Christ and live for the devil.

Then he asked me about his sister being a lesbian. He said that she is happy and that he wants his sister to be happy. I had him read 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. He did and said, but she’s happy and he just want her to be happy. He looked like he was in his mid 20’s so I asked him to envision that his sister is happy with her lover and that she remains happy the rest of her life.

I said let’s say that she’s happy for the next 60 years, she dies, then where will she go? Yeah, but she was happy her whole life he said. I pointed out to Jared that being happy for 80 or even 90 years is nothing compared to eternity. I told him that if he really loves his sister that he should warn her about the judgment that she is going to face. I gave him a tract and told him that he could contact me if he wants to talk some more. I pray that God will save Jared, his sister and her friend.

We witnessed Friday until 4 pm and then we ate a quick supper and went back to the camp and Rev. Baker gave us some pointers on how we could improve our street preaching and then Pastor Kevin Smith, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was our speaker that night. He encouraged us to branch out into other types of ministries as well as street witnessing, such as jail ministries, universities, the projects, etc. It was another great night of teaching.

Then Saturday morning, we were up and praying together from 6 am to 7 am and we were down at the track at 7:30 am. We witnessed on Derby day for 13 ½ hours. We were absolutely physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of the day, but it was another great day of witnessing.

Aaron is a fairly aggressive preacher (he preaches God’s truth and he’s not mean about it, but he brings it). Greg and I are somewhat aggressive. But Joe and John are not aggressive in the least bit, and several times during the day, people got riled up while John was preaching. Someone even threw beer or soda on him at one point. Thankfully, John was using his water proof Bible. John is very compassionate about the lost. More than once during the day, I saw him come off the stand with tears in his eyes and Joe does a great job of reasoning with people.

It was another day of great one to one conversations. I talked to a young homeless man named Justin for a while. He had me pray for him and his girlfriend and I helped them with supper that night. Another man named David came up to me after I brought a message and we talked a long time (I didn’t keep track of the time, but he managed to drink four beers during our conversation). He told me that he’s a good person and tries to live a good life. I pointed out that there is none good, no not one. He believes that Jesus was just a good person with good teachings, but he didn’t know if Jesus was really the Son of God. He even told me that he loves the beatitudes and has them up on his wall at home.

I pointed out that Jesus gave that message in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. I said a lot of people like the “warm fuzzy” Jesus, but I asked him if he ever read on down to the last part of chapter 5 where Jesus calls lusting adultery and warns us that we should cut out eyes or limbs before we allow our sins to take us to Hell. I also directed him to several verses in Matthew chapter 7. Greg even came over and talked to him too. We tag teamed him for a while until one of his friends came over, then Greg broke away and talked to the friend and David and I talked again for quite a while. I asked him to contact me through BornofHim.org (it’s listed on the back of our tracts). He said that he appreciated the way I pleaded with him to get right with God.

I also talked to a poor old drunkard named Jeff. He came up and wanted to talk while I was preaching against alcohol. I was explaining how the demons lure you in saying one drink won’t hurt you and later on you end up becoming a drunkard and Satan is still tempting you for more and more until you fall over the cliff into the abyss and Satan is laughing at you the whole time while you are falling straight into Hell.

Jeff’s speech was so slurred that he was hard to hear, but Aaron came over and talked to Jeff while I finished up the message. Then I joined him and we kept talking to Jeff until he broke down crying that he didn’t want the demon of alcohol anymore. He asked Aaron to pray for him and he did and I think we were all in tears; praying for God to save Jeff and to release him from the devil’s stronghold against him.

Aaron got into many conversations throughout the day. You can see from the picture below that I was preaching and pointing a young man to a Bible verse while Aaron was talking to guy’s girlfriend. We had many conversations like this throughout the day. The crowd really started leaving the track around 7 pm and Bill Adams joined us for much of the afternoon. When the crowd started coming out, Bill asked Aaron to preach. Aaron’s voice was just about to give out. In fact he said the time he preached before that he was done, that he didn’t have a voice to preach anymore after that. But he got up there and we cranked the amplifier all the way up Aaron even added his own speaker system to it and by the grace of God, I think he must have preached for an hour and half straight.

(This is a young Jewish couple debating about the Messiah)

The crowd was rowdy coming out. Aaron was preaching hard about the sinfulness of men and the righteousness of God. They didn’t like it. At one point someone threw a beer bottle at him and it hit Greg who was right behind Aaron. It got on Greg and then still hit Aaron. Other people tried to get to him, so several of us kind of took turns surrounding him to keep the drunks away. At one point there were about six mounted policemen riding down the street and they were trying to clear the way for an ambulance. As the horses walked by us, one of them relieved himself and then four or five more did the same thing. Spreading manure quite a ways down the street. When it happened, Greg and I both thought, oh no, this can’t be good.

Sure enough, a drunk picked up some horse manure and hurled it at Aaron. It hit him in the back of his head and landed on his shirt. Later I told Aaron that unfortunately I was standing close enough to him that I received some of his “blessing” too. Can you imagine how much you’d have to hate God to be willing to put your hand in horse manure in order to throw it at a preacher? To Aaron’s credit, he ignored it and kept on preaching!

We had several people trying to get to Aaron, so we typically had a couple of us around him while he was preaching his last message. Toward the end of the night a man named Justin came up to me. He said that he wanted to talk to me. By this time, frankly I was worn out and sore and I was tired of the shenanigans of the drunks, so I told him to move along. He said no, I really want to talk to you. Again, I suggested that he move on. He asked a third time, imploring me that he really wanted to talk. By this time Bill Adams had just sat down in a chair, so I hollered at him and asked him to come back over to protect the preacher and Justin and I walked a little bit away so we could talk.

Justin told me that he was envious of my relationship with God. He said that he used to be strong Christian when he was younger, but that he drifted away from God. I asked him about John 10 where Jesus says that no man is able to pluck us out of God’s hand. Justin was taller than me so I looked up at him and said, Justin, are you a man? He said, yeah, I’m a man! Then you cannot pluck yourself out of God’s hand. I told him, if you’re continually living a sinful lifestyle, then you couldn’t have really been a strong Christian like you thought. I pointed out that he would still be living for God if he had truly been saved when he thought he was.

I asked him what he was counting on for his salvation and he said his baptism. I explained to him that we are only saved by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ our Lord (Acts 20:21). We talked some more and then he asked me what I thought about gambling and I told him that it is a sin. He then surprised me by saying that he is a professional gambler. He said that he pays his bills each month by playing professional poker.

I told him that he’d have to give that up if he is serious about getting right with God. He then wanted to know, what if he gave the money he won to the church? I said if a good looking young lady walked up to us and said that she wants to prostitute her body out because she can make a lot of money and she’s willing to donate a bunch of that money to the church, would God be pleased with that? He hung his head and said no.

He kept telling me that he really wanted a close relationship with God, but that he didn’t want to let go of gambling (he didn’t see any difference in that and being a stock broker). I told Justin that he was a modern day rich young ruler, the one who walked away sad, because he loved his riches. Justin didn’t want to give up his profession. He thanked me for talking to him and he said that he appreciated the way I talked to him.

Justin was the last person I witnessed to that Saturday night. 19 of us had witnessed in three groups for two days and we ended up waiting while Bobby McCreery finished up preaching and Bobby was talking to Justin, the same young man that I had just spoken with. Bobby also spoke to a couple of young ladies from Louisville and he asked them where they go to church and they said the same church that Kevin Smith (one of our speakers Friday night) is the pastor of. It was awesome to hear Bobby tell them that their pastor had spoken to our street preaching group the night before.

We ate supper late Saturday night at around 10:30 pm and we were all excited and it was hard to get to sleep. It was a little after midnight when I went to sleep after reading a chapter in Zechariah. Then Sunday morning I “slept in” until 6 am. Most of the men were already up and packing to go home. In fact a few left really early that morning. So I packed my stuff while Greg and Aaron got ready to go. We loaded the car down and went back inside and Greg suggested that we all pray before we headed home. I’m really glad that he did. We went around the room thanking God for His protection and for the Holy Spirit being upon us and many of the people at outreach. We prayed that God would give the increase for the seeds that were planted.

When I awoke that morning after the Derby Outreach and lay there in bed for a few minutes, I was so sore and stiff that I could hardly move. I was physically, mentally and emotionally drained. But as I lay there praying silently to God, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that there is no greater honor in this world than the honor of lifting up the precious name of Jesus Christ out on the streets. No honor from men could ever come close to this.

You may never get on a box and open-air preach. That’s OK. But every Christian should share their faith with others. Are you ready in season and out of season to proclaim the glorious Gospel? Can you give your testimony to someone in three to five minutes? No? Then please go to livingwaters.com and/or onemilliontracts.com and buy some Gospel tracts. You can leave them with restaurant servers (along with a good tip – better than 10%), you can leave them lying around wherever you go. Start today. Help spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You never know what God will do with one little tract.

I had lunch with a friend after we got back to Springfield and I told him that we had a lot of good conversations with lost folks at this outreach. He wanted to know what a good conversation meant. I really didn’t do a very good job of explaining it to him, but I think the best way to describe it is when you let them tell you their world view and the Holy Spirit directs you in what to say to the person that’s asking you questions by pointing them to biblical truth, while they stand there and listen and it’s a back and forth exchange. I personally consider that a good conversation. When they can see that you genuinely care for their soul, when they see your zeal for the Lord and your compassion for them and they walk away knowing that the conversation wasn’t just a typical conversation, that it was deeper and a more spiritual conversation, I consider that a good conversation.

My hope and prayer is that God will continue working on the people that He was convicting during this outreach. I pray that He will give them sleepless nights until they cry out to Him “what must I do to be saved?” On Sunday night I saw a couple of pictures that Ricky Gantz posted from the outreach. Please notice the woman below is grabbing her face like “oh no” and then she put her face in her hands and started weeping. Why open-air preach? Because it’s biblical and God still uses open-air preaching to reach and convict lost souls.