Mission Trip Day 4

Yesterday the mission team went into downtown Seattle to do prayer walking and street evangelism.  This experience is always a pivotal moment for anyone who goes down there because of the great spiritual darkness in that place.  While downtown isn't necessarily dangerous during the daytime, one has to have an openness to the Holy Spirit and discernment to know when to engage someone in conversation and when not to.

 We met this man, who moved from Birmingham, Alabama to share the Gospel with people on the streets of Seattle.

As I had expected, our team did encounter many new things while there and were able to truly experience the emptiness that is there. 

One team was able to talk to a man who was clearly strung out on heroin.  He was in and out of consciousness.

Another team talked to a man who was selling marijuana in a park.

Still another team inadvertently walked into a coffee shop that is being operated as a safe place for homosexuals to gather.  They asked about the "Who is Jesus to You?" shirts that the team was wearing and they explained what they were doing on the streets.  One of the young men said he had attended seminary in the past but had parted from the church because he had experienced judgement from it.  He proclaimed to still love Jesus.

I got to talk to a Muslim man about his thoughts, and mine, regarding Jesus.  He was courteous and so was I, but we differ considerably on our views of who Jesus is.  Earlier I got to talk to a man who offered me marijuana, and he was hanging out on a corner with a transvestite.

In perhaps the worst expression of the depravity present in downtown, one of our groups spoke to a man about Jesus and asked if they could pray with him.  He told them that he would do that after he took "care of some business."  He then proceeded to get a syringe out and inject himself with heroin right there on a stairway in the open.  He then of course was in and out of consciousness.

To say these events were a shock to everyone is an understatement.  Ironically, there was a tremendous presence of Christians in downtown on many street corners.  What seems to have happened is that many have come to downtown after hearing about the spiritual needs present there.  As a result, the population there has heard the story so many times that they now either know how to respond to spiritual questions because they want something, or they are so hardened to the Gospel that they won't even listen.

This reminds me of the importance of relationships as we speak to others about Jesus.  If all we do is schedule events that are spread apart or are one-time events, we will not be heard.  People in the city know that there are teams coming for events such as this and they are not granting them, or us, the right to be heard.  Lack of regular presence equates to lack of caring in their eyes, and really, who can blame them?  If you have a family member that only checks in with you once a year, or if you almost never see them, do YOU believe they care about you?  Probably not.

If there was no other outcome from yesterday we realized the need for building relationships with those we intend to talk to about Jesus. We must earn the right to be heard. We must live among all kinds of people and live life with them. Jesus would have done if no differently.

We walked the streets and prayed with Steve, who is another community pastor from EFC.  This wall represented the Living Water to us.
 

The big news out of Kid's Club was that we had 4 salvation a last night!  Four girls in the group accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, the most important decision anyone can make in their life.  We will now begin the work of discipling them, hopefully plugging them in at EFC for the long term.  That makes 6 salvations for the week, which is incredible.  Many more lives were touched and seeds were planted for the future.  The Bible makes clear that the Lord is the one who calls, not human beings.  While we want everyone to accept Jesus, it isn't our work other than to present the Gospel to others.