First Friday 07-03-10

First Fridays bring crowds of people to downtown Phoenix on the first Friday of every month to check out art vendors and musicians. Wherever there are crowds, it's a good place to witness to people. This month (as well as next month), there were no vendors as they seem to be planning on reworking First Fridays. But the crowds were still there and so were we.

Tom, Alan and I met Anne, Leigh and Joe downtown and we passed out tons of tracts. Tom thought of the idea to bring cold bottles of water and offer them to people who could give the correct answer a simple question, "Are you good enough to get into heaven?" Of course, this usually runs into further questions and discussion and we were able to witness to a lot of people in this way.


After a little while, our friendly neighborhood atheists showed up with a bullhorn and some of their "Anti-tracts." They put these together themselves and pass them out in an attempt to counter our evangelism efforts. They take Scripture out of context and mock it, but I find more of their anti-tracts tossed on the ground at the end of the night than our Christian tracts.

We talked to a lot of people, I'll just touch on a couple of them here.
I discussed the Gospel with a guy in a dress, but couldn't quite get through to him. He believed that it was all about love, and that all religions are the same, as is popularly taught today. He claimed to be a Christian and eventually went on his way.

Tom had just finished an Open Air and a girl came up and asked what we were talking about. He explained it to her and she wanted to hear more. Her name was Frida and she listened intently to the entire message. We gave her some tracts to take with her, and I also gave her a CD of Hell's Best Kept Secret and True and False Conversions (available to listen to freely at LivingWaters.com ).

Later we talked to a young man named Israel and a couple of his friends. They seemed interested and took some tracts with them when they left.

Alan gathered a crowd for some Open Air preaching, taking them through the law then grace of the Gospel.

 














We talked to a young wolf - very cool costume, the mouth even moved when she spoke. She kept saying that "we don't get what we deserve". I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that, and tried to get some clarification. I said, "Some people get what they deserve", but she disagreed. I asked her if everyone would get into heaven then, and she just repeated that no one gets what they deserve.

It was difficult to understand her through the mask, though, and I couldn't really get anywhere. We talked to her for a little while and she claimed to be a Christian as she left us.

Over all, it was a great night of sharing the Gospel.

Soli Deo Gloria