Episode 48: Fayetteville Parade Recap

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast.

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So you guys hear me first of all. Normally you hear Quatro. Well, he's not going to be with us today, but I do have a special guest.

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Man, how many times have you been on the Ruled Church Podcast now? Four? Yeah, I think this is my fourth time.

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Third, third for sure, but fourth I think might be my fourth. Yeah, yeah. So you guys probably recognize the famous voice of Gunner Madewell.

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Say hello, Gunner. Hello, everyone. Coming to you live from Perryville.

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As a matter of fact, Gunner is sitting in Quatro's seat. Drinking from Quatro's coffee mug.

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Using Quatro's microphone. So he's just taking over Quatro's position.

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He's even doing all of the technical side of things for the podcast tonight.

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Yeah. All right. Well, the reason why I wanted to have Gunner on with me today is we wanted to talk a little bit about evangelism.

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And we had the opportunity to go with some other guys and be a part of an evangelistic outreach.

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And we want to talk a little bit about that, a little bit about what the Bible teaches us about evangelism, and kind of our motivation to do evangelism.

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So Gunner, to get us started, I just want us to talk a little bit about why evangelize?

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I mean, wouldn't we just like to go to church on Sunday, have a nice time with your family, you know, pray, hear the word preached, sing songs, go about your life?

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Wouldn't it be easier to just do that and not worry about, you know, going out and spending time preaching or sharing the gospel with other people?

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Why evangelize, Gunner? Well, I mean, sure. You could do all those things if you want to miss out on obeying part of the

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Bible. And that's Matthew 28, right? No, it's not

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Matthew 28. Yeah, it's Matthew 28, the Great Commission, right? We have this

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Great Commission to go and to evangelize, to make disciples, to baptize.

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And if we are not evangelizing, if we are not sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we are in part disobeying the very word of God.

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And so I think chiefly the reason we evangelize is because we got to.

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We have no other choice. If we're going to call ourselves Christians, we got to evangelize. I think another part of it is that although we want to obey

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God and we all want to obey the Bible, we have a love for our neighbors.

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That's good. If we don't give them the gospel, which is the hope of eternal life, the hope of Jesus Christ, then they have no hope for their souls.

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And we know from the scripture, how will men be saved unless someone preaches to them?

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We see passages like Acts 17, repent. We see so many passages in the scripture of people coming to Christ by the preaching, by the preaching of the word of God.

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It's really kind of... I don't want to get too much into some different things we're going to talk about.

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However, I will say, why evangelize? Because preaching is a necessity. No one will become a

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Christian. No one will be saved unless someone preaches to them, gives them the gospel. That's right.

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That's right. And as far as you're talking about our love for people, I do believe that in all parts of ministry, evangelism, discipleship, love for the local church, all of these things have to be driven first and foremost by love for the

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Lord. But that love for the Lord does cause us to love image bearers of the

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Lord, people who bear the image of God. And so we want to preach the gospel to them so that they can be converted, so that they can glorify

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God in that way. But one of the things that you and I both encountered in this evangelistic outreach, and we'll reveal in just a moment where we were at and what we were doing, and it's not a big secret or anything.

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But one of the things that we encountered was over and over people thinking that we hated them, that we were there because we were angry or something like that.

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And I'll tell you, one of the biggest things that came out of that event, that outreach event, was just the opportunity to keep expressing to people, no, we're here to tell you about good news because we really do care about you.

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And so that love for the Lord then drives a love in us for people.

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And so I think that's absolutely necessary. However, we know that just because we love them doesn't mean that they're not going to be opposed to the message, that they're going to want to hear it, that they're going to be excited to hear it.

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You were mentioning the Great Commission in Matthew 28, and in 1 Corinthians 1,

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Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, and I just want to read this. Paul says this in 1

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Corinthians 1, verse 18, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

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For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning

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I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

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Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know

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God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach

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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foliage Gentiles, but to those who are called, both

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Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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And I just really lean on that passage of Scripture, that no matter what the response when we go out sharing the gospel, we know that it is

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God who has to transform hearts. It says, to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

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And we ought to expect that men, in their natural state, are going to demand signs,

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Jews demand signs, or they're going to seek wisdom, Greeks seek wisdom, but they're going to see the cross as foolishness, and they're going to hear our message as something other than what it is, unless the

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Holy Spirit brings a converting work upon their heart. And so I just wanted to read that as we kind of jump into this.

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So Gunnar, you're the one that invited me, so tell our audience, where did we go?

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Okay, so we went to the hipster liberal hub of Arkansas, to Fayetteville, a college town, and they had a gay pride parade that was going on.

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Gunnar, we need to be culturally correct here.

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It was an LGBTQ plus pride parade. Well, I was going to say homosexual parade, but okay.

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But we went on a weekend, and yeah.

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February, or June 24th, it was June 24th, wasn't it? Yes, it was. A couple weeks ago.

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We went in the morning, we met with a bunch of guys, we all prayed together, and we did the craziest thing, something that you'd never believe that a

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Christian would do. We just got a bunch of pieces of paper that said the gospel on it, and we handed them to people, and then we preached the

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Bible. That's all we did. And yes, it was a great day, very tiring day.

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It was a very tiring day. We got there about 10 o 'clock in the morning, and I think we started walking back to our vehicle about 7 .30

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in the evening. Right, yeah. It says here, I was just looking this up, one of the brothers that was organizing kind of the whole group posted this, that there were 35 men in the larger group that we were a part of, comprising coming from seven different churches and sharing the gospel at this event.

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Of course, we know that there were other people there. You and I even met another guy there that was there praying, and so there were other people than just our group, of course, sharing the gospel.

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There were thousands of people at this event, and so there were probably other

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Christians that we didn't know about that were there sharing the gospel that we didn't run into or anything like that, but that was where we went.

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So I kind of thought, Gunnar, what we would do is just kind of go through and talk about some of our experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly.

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We might not share everything. There are some things that might not be – this is a G -rated podcast, or maybe

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PG -rated. I think even describing it won't be appropriate, but yeah.

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What do you want to start with? Well, let's kind of start at the beginning of the day, and what stood out to you just as we were getting started?

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Those cops. Well, before we get to the cops, I would like to say, so the way this was laid out, we went down to – if anyone knows anything about Fayetteville, the parade was going to happen along Dixon Street, which is kind of a famous street there, a lot of restaurants and bars along that street, a lot of partying that goes on in that street after football games and different kinds of events that happen at the

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University of Arkansas. So that's where the parade was going to happen, and there was a parking lot that had been reserved by the event organizers, and it was kind of set up like a little fair.

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There were booths, and you could buy things, and it was a public event. That was our understanding was that it was a public event, and so we went down there, and we started out – we weren't this big group of guys.

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We were just small groups, and so it was me and Gunner and another brother were together, and we were just – we weren't even preaching at this point, like street preaching.

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It was just kind of – We just – no, we weren't even – we were just kind of walking around like –

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Passing out tracks, kind of just having conversations with people. Filling out what was going on, yeah, like we didn't even know what was going on.

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Yeah, nothing at all that I would have ever thought of as confrontational.

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This was far from confrontational. Right. I would have thought. So we had gotten started.

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We had had – I don't know. I don't even know. We'd had several conversations, but they were rather short.

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But we had – you and I had talked to a few people. Randall had talked to a few people.

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So we had had a handful of – What about those two ladies that we talked to in the beginning? Do you remember those?

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Yeah, yeah. The thing that really –

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One of the things that was big at the parade was like – It's so funny. It's hypocrisy.

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It was positivity. Like you're out here to be positive. You're out here to spread love.

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And like immediately when we started talking to people, they would judge us. Like even just speaking a word.

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Are you all here to bring something positive? Because if you're not, you don't need to be here. And that was when we said, yes, we're here with good news.

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That's exactly what we're here with. The whole parade, if you've never been to a gay pride parade, and if you're just trying to go, don't.

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But if you're going with the intent of giving the gospel, just understand that the parade is like kind of whatever floats your boat type thing.

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Like whatever people are into, that's what people are doing. And they'll accept all that except for you.

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Except for what you want to say, they're not going to approve of that. That's right.

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So that's kind of what brings us to the cop scenario. So we had been there,

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I mean, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, not over 45 minutes. We did have a longer conversation with a real nice couple.

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And they were normal. They weren't even doing anything. They weren't even wearing a rainbow or nothing.

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They were just walking around. That was one of the things where when people were dressed casually, just kind of the normal, they would stand out because everyone else was dressed in these wild ways.

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And so whenever you found someone that was just T -shirt, pair of shorts, they would really stand out because they look normal.

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But we had a conversation with a married couple. She was basically an agnostic.

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He claimed to be an atheist. And so we had a great conversation sharing the gospel and going back and forth on a few points of the gospel and just really sharing with them their need for the

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Lord. But just before we got into that conversation, we had really didn't even have a conversation.

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Just Randall, I think, offered this lady a tract. And she did not like him offering her that tract.

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And she said some things that we wouldn't repeat. He added some obscenities.

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And used a certain hand gesture toward him. And we just thought, well, okay, whatever.

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Well, just after that, a lady came by with a young daughter, pretty young child.

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And the other lady came back. And Gunnar and Randall both had body cameras that they were wearing.

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Of course, the cameras were not so that we could expose anything.

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We weren't wearing them for any kind of nefarious purpose other than just protection. In case something was done to us, we could prove that we weren't the aggressors or whatever.

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But anyway, this lady, we weren't preaching. But she began to preach to everyone around.

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She began to stand in front of Randall and proclaim that he was videoing everyone without their permission, which our understanding, and this is still the case, this is right.

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In a public place, you have the right to film. You have no expectation of privacy in a public place.

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And so Randall was standing there, this lady saying that.

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Well, the other lady with the daughter, she then basically said,

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I don't want you filming my daughter. And we're like, well, we're not trying to film your daughter. But anyway, so then a lady came up to us that was one of the organizers of the event and basically asked us to leave.

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And I mean, it was almost right behind her, right? I mean, it was. Yeah. Two police officers came up and they were nice.

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I mean, they weren't. But they said that we had to leave that area where that was going on because what they told us was that the event organizers had the right to say who could and couldn't be in this one parking lot that they had reserved.

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And we thought that maybe that wasn't right legally because it was such a public event, but we thought it was better for the overall outreach that day and the other guys sharing the gospel there that we not really push that.

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So we did leave that parking lot. However, they couldn't tell us to leave the street, like the sidewalk, and there were still thousands of people out there.

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So it wasn't like, oh, man, we can't share the gospel now because there were plenty of people still to pass out tracks to and share the gospel with.

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And obviously, I don't know about your opinion, Gunnar, but I felt like those police officers, they were just doing their job and they just didn't want any trouble.

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So I don't feel like they were being – they certainly weren't rude or anything like that.

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And I felt like our interaction with them was pretty good as opposed to the people otherwise.

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Do you ever think about Hitler and his army and the soldiers?

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Like, why did y 'all do that? Well, we're just doing our job. I understand that.

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Like, I understand them saying it's not – but at the same time, they're going to be held accountable for saying – for the hypocrisy that's going on.

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Like, we weren't doing anything wrong. We were just talking to people. And that was one of the things that Randall pointed out with them was guys see the hypocrisy here, that we were the ones being pushed away.

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What was really – what was really, I thought, eye -opening in the parade, because I have street preached before at the local grocery store, at some events in my town.

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I've evangelized to people on the streets. We've knocked on doors to people in our town.

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You know, we've evangelized. However, to go to something like that and to just speak a word and to just give somebody a card and for them immediately to kind of push back,

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I was not ready for that. And I asked myself, what's it going to be like later on, you know, if this is already happening?

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We're already getting people to cuss at us. That was what struck me, too, was that it was such a –

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I mean, it was very little that we had done. Yeah.

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I mean, very non -confrontational, very – I mean, I would say at that point we really hadn't done anything but strike up a few conversations, try to hand people a few tracks.

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I mean, it did seem like it was striking how little it took to incur that kind of rejection.

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Well, and here's the thing. They weren't offended. I know they weren't offended. They wanted to find something to be mad about.

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And so they said, these people that call themselves Christian, these are the perfect targets.

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Like the woman who said, you know, they have a body cam on, they're trying to exploit your children.

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She wasn't actually offended, and she really didn't believe that because everyone else had their cameras out. She just wanted somebody to target.

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Oh, that's good. And Christians are the people, you know, Christians are the people. Yeah, you're right. So let's move – so now we're outside.

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So what's the next thing that you want to share that happened? I mean, we can't share everything, but what happened next?

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We might make it a two -parter. But we get out onto the main road, and what we did – just talk about a little bit of strategy, and what we did, kind of our mindset was we grouped up, and we just picked a spot, and we said, every person that passes by this spot is going to have a gospel track in their hand, and we want to talk to people.

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Usually what happened was you just pass them a track. There's some people that think, you know, you've got to have a 20 -minute conversation.

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If you miss something in the gospel, like they're not going to be converted. Like I know people that have evangelized at Times Square, at different countries, and sometimes just giving a track is – and especially at an event like this, 30 ,000 people, you can't have conversations with everyone.

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And so we thought – and so we had a bunch of groups. What we did was we gave tracks to people. When people said something, we encouraged them.

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We gave them the gospel. Hey, this is what this card means. You can have hope in Christ.

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God forgives the sin of homosexuality. I even talked about people that –

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God not only forgives the sin of homosexuality, but of you approving of homosexuality, even if you're not one.

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If you're coming to this event approving of it, you need to repent, but God forgives that sin if you come to Christ.

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So we sat in a – we got in an area, stood up, gave tracks. We talked to people.

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Usually it was, you know, I would say like 60, 40, 60 bad, 40 people just took them, went on their way.

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Several people – we were standing next to a trash can. Several people took the track and immediately deposited it in the overflowing trash can.

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I'm like, first of all, you know, we paid for those. Second of all, like it's – or they would put them not just in the trash can.

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They would set them next to the trash can. I'm like – and I hollered at people like, if you're going to throw it away, just give it back.

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Recycle these tracks. Which brings up a story I think we should tell because I do want to highlight –

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I don't want to make it sound like, man, everybody was just so against – no, they were against us.

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You know, they were rejecting the gospel. But I think we want to be fair.

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We, of course, want to be fair. So we had one encounter. So these two guys –

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One was dressed as a woman. One was dressed as a woman, but these were males. These were assigned by God to be males.

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Visibly, noticeably males. Right, you could tell that, right. But Gunnar handed – you handed the one nearest to you a track.

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And I guess I handed the other guy a track. And that guy ripped it up and threw it on the ground.

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Right, yeah. And walked away. And this is literally right in front, within arm's length. Yeah, yeah, within two feet of us.

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And then the one that you had handed the track to, he nicely handed it back to you.

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And he actually picked up the ripped track and handed it back to you. And I have to say,

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I'm going to give him credit that, you know, he was trying to not be – now he still didn't want to hear the gospel, of course.

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He handed you the track back. He rejected the gospel, and he's going to have to answer for that before the

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Lord. But I do think it's important that we don't want to paint it like –

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These are, you know, the evilest people you've ever met. Right. Well, and even with those two guys, we kind of see the example of one who was filled with kind of this anger and bitterness.

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And maybe the other guy who honestly looked to me like he clearly knew that what he was doing was wrong.

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I could see that on his face, I think. And he didn't want the conviction from it, but he didn't want the conviction from rejecting it with so much hostility as the other guy,

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I think. I mean, that was my interpretation of the way that went down. Yeah, I would agree that, you know, not everyone was horrible.

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However, the whole pride parade as a whole, if you walk in there and you confess

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Christ, if you have a Bible in your hand, you know, whatever, and even if you don't, like people notice you're kind of – you're not in with the whole parade, but it's like they hate you.

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They literally – like it's not like, hey, I'm like, oh, I'm just not cool with your views, but we're still okay.

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Like they hate you. They hate you. And so that was kind of the – but there was a lot of people that just took a track or when you would tell them this is the gospel of hope,

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Jesus came. He came in the form of a man, died on a cross for your sins, rose again, and they were like, all right, man, appreciate it.

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You know, I've heard that before. Or they would say, oh, yeah, man, appreciate it. But there's, you know, people that would take a track and rip it up in their mouths and throw it on the ground in hatred and cursing at you and, you know, yelling at you some sexual stuff

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I've never even like thought about. And because you just tell them, because you hand them a piece of paper that says

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Jesus saves you. I think our card said, turn from sin, turn to Jesus.

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And it had an arrow on it. Nothing like, you know, gay people are going to hell or anything like that.

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It was just a simple card and people hated it. And I think it's kind of what you talked about, the guilt they felt inside and the shame that they felt.

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And anybody that would dare expose that, they didn't greet it with humility.

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They didn't greet that conviction with, okay, you know what,

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I ought to repent. They greeted it with hatred and they doubled down and they pushed it deep down inside of themselves.

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And they put their feelings out on the prophets.

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So let me ask you this question, Gunnar. Was there any particular things? I mean, of course, there's a lot, but particular things, one or two, or I have three that I can think of off the top of my head, of things that really grieved you that you've seen.

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Of course, there were a lot more than that, but just maybe at the very top, things that just really grieved you that you observed about.

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Yeah, so I'll probably do three. So probably the first one that struck me was the amount of transgender people, not just homosexual, but transgender people.

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I would see people from the back and I'd be like, okay, that's a woman. They'd turn around and they're a man. And so we kind of talk about transgenderism, but we don't see it in my town.

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Like I don't think there's one transgender person in my town, but to go there and actually see it in person, it's disgusting, honestly.

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The second thing would probably be the, I'll save the worst one probably for last, but the second one would probably be the older men.

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There'd be two gay old men holding hands. That, like, I just don't get it in my brain, how these men could live their whole lives, obviously other than sin.

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We understand that, but these men are closer to death than we are and they love their sin.

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They hate God and they rejoice in their misdeeds and their iniquities and they do it and they shout it.

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The third thing I would say was probably all the children there. Yep, that was my number one thing

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I was going to say. The children were, I mean, I would see babies, you know, children younger than my one -year -old in their carriers being pushed along waving a gay flag.

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And small children, impressionable children seeing this.

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And I think even more than the babies was the children my kids' age, young enough to understand.

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Old enough to understand, but young enough to be impressed. And not be able to push back and not like they're being forced to do this.

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And it was horrible, you know. I thought of my own children and honestly,

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I thought of the blessings I have in Christ that my children are not here, that God has not let me keep doing what

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I was doing, keep following the ways of the world. And I could have been easily the one bringing my child to this event.

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And really, it gripped me with the grace that God has given me, honestly.

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I thought going into it that I would be very angry and that I would be short -tempered and I would, you know, just with the foolishness of what's going on and the righteous indignation that I have for the sin, it really just filled me with grief and really thankfulness for the grace that God has given me.

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Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had, that was at the top of my list, the children.

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I was just, you know, my children are teenagers and I couldn't imagine exposing my children to that on purpose, you know, on purpose exposing my children to that.

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Even my oldest son is 16 and, you know, being down there,

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I was like, I would not have even wanted to have brought him to help us pass out tracts with what we were seeing, you know.

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Even though he would have clearly understood that this was wickedness, he would have clearly understood that we're here to share the gospel.

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I'm like, no way. You can't unsee that stuff. But you can't unsee that, right. And so just broken hearted over all the children.

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I mean, so many children. The second thing was professing

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Christians. Yeah, honestly, yes, that's right. You know, we went to give a tract to one lady and she said, oh,

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I don't need that. And you could tell that she was in support of everything there, that she had something rainbow on.

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But she said, I don't need that. I'm an ordained Methodist minister. And, of course, we know that, you know, women can't be pastors and all those.

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But I'm saying, let's even put that doctrinal distinction aside for a moment.

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This woman is claiming that she is a believer in Christ.

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So she didn't need our tract, but she's in support of the things happening down there.

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I had a long conversation with a gentleman who, I don't know if gentleman's the right word, but who, you know, he was a homosexual man about 70 years old.

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And he was formerly a Baptist preacher. And he had left the service.

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I mean, we know that he was apostate. He was not believing. He had never believed the gospel.

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But he had left even the pretense of the gospel for this perversion.

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Look how much sin will twist a man and how much sin will wreck your life.

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Right, right. Don't play around with it. Right. So, you know, professing believers, that was such a, that was so grievous to my heart, to see the professing believers.

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And then the third thing, and this one was really shocking for me. You mentioned transgenderism.

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We've all heard about furries and people that think they're animals. And we've seen people, you know, wearing animal masks and on leashes, human beings on leashes.

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Men wearing the stuff and with the woman carrying the leash. Yeah, it was just, it was, that was so grievous to me.

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I mean, all of this is so, it's at war with the image of God.

36:03

Yeah. It's at war with the Imago Dei. And it was heartbreaking.

36:09

It was heartbreaking to see that they would prefer to align with animals than to be aligned with the

36:22

God of the universe who created them. And that was so grievous, you know, to see those things going on.

36:32

It was just horrible. Well, let's move it along a little bit.

36:38

So, that was most of the afternoon passing out tracts. You passed out, I will say this,

36:44

Gunnar is the tract, man, he's the tract passer -outer. I don't know if it was the heat or just what we were seeing, but I got a little bit,

36:55

I didn't feel well for a little while. No, you fell out, dude. You couldn't hang with the big ones. Yeah, I fell out.

37:01

I did. I did, man. It was hot and all that. And then we did take a break for, we walked, there was a house, a

37:10

Christian family that allowed our group to use their home as a kind of a place that we could go and get a bottle of water and take a break if we needed to.

37:21

And so, we had walked back to that house. And then I do want to point this out.

37:26

As we were coming back, Gunnar, you pointed out just, you know, we've seen this event and the depravity that was on display.

37:37

And you pointed out that God would be righteous and holy to judge,

37:45

I mean, to just swallow up everyone there in judgment because of the wickedness that was on display.

37:51

And that just made me realize, and you've already mentioned this, but man,

37:58

God's grace was also on display. His forbearance, His mercy to grant the opportunity for those people to hear the gospel preached and to not take their lives that day.

38:11

I mean, everyone's there. The wickedness that was on display, it just made me see all the more clearly

38:18

God's grace. God's grace is also on display whenever we see, or His mercy,

38:25

His forbearance is on display whenever we see that kind of wickedness. And it doesn't mean that God's not going to judge.

38:32

He is going to judge. And yet, we still seen God's common grace on display and even special grace in allowing the gospel to be preached.

38:41

How much patience does God show in a 30 ,000 people cursing

38:49

Him, like breathing His air with one breath and one breath breathing it and the next breath cursing

38:58

Him? That's right. They're walking on His ground. Every step they take is judgment.

39:05

Like, yeah, that's what I was saying. God would be just. Why? Why would God not just let us fall into hell?

39:12

Why? Because of all of this rampant sin. I mean, I think of Sodom and Gomorrah.

39:21

Just this. And honestly, I think it's this podcast is specifically about this because the prayer was like, there's so many sins that are going on.

39:33

But I think more than those, this is a sin against nature.

39:45

It's a sin against how God has made you. It's a sin against your gender, how

39:52

God has made you a male or female. Why would

39:58

God let these people live? He's patient. He's patient. And honestly,

40:04

I think of myself when my son just just tonight, he was doing this. I said,

40:09

I said to do something. I said, say yes, sir. And he's like, no. And I kind of got frustrated.

40:16

I was like, man, my son is disobeying me right now. God is much more patient than I am.

40:26

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds us that God's patient with us as well. You know,

40:32

I'll admit something. Just this last Saturday, I spoke an angry word to my wife and had to repent of that.

40:42

And man, the Lord is so, so patient with me, you know, so, so, so kind to forgive me of that.

40:49

I don't deserve to be forgiven of that. Yet, yet he's kind to do so.

40:54

He's gracious and loving to do so. So then then the parade starts.

41:01

Parade starts at five o 'clock. And our whole group gathered up and we spent about, what, 50 minutes, 45, 50 minutes singing hymns.

41:12

We just sang hymns while the parade was going on. And I'll be honest. Praise the Lord that it just happened this way.

41:19

I happened to be kind of our whole group was all grouped up together and I was away from the parade.

41:26

So I did not see almost anything that was in the parade. And and I didn't want to see it, honestly, did not want to see the things that were in the parade.

41:37

So if anybody asked me, you know, what, did they have this or that in the parade? I honestly don't know, because one,

41:44

I didn't want to see. And I just happened to be not in a good place to be able to see.

41:49

Yeah. But we just spent we spent the the majority of the actual parade time we spent singing hymns.

41:58

Yeah, I I don't think that you have to do that necessarily.

42:05

There was there was a train actually next to us.

42:10

Yeah. Coming through a train, come through. There's music playing. It was so loud. We had people that were just standing by us.

42:19

And and we sung a mighty fortress is our God.

42:25

Holy, holy, holy. Come now found all the Christ alone in Christ alone.

42:31

All these gospel rich hymns. And what we did was we sang we sang.

42:36

So these people next to us had no choice but to hear us. And they sat under gospel singing.

42:46

They heard it. And, you know, a lot of them got super mad.

42:52

A lot of them tried to tried to stop us. A lot of them held their gay pride flags in front of us so nobody would see us.

43:01

But we just kept singing. Honestly, I had to stop a little bit because we were singing so loud for so long.

43:07

My voice was starting to hurt. But we we a lot of people heard us.

43:15

There was a there was a it was kind of weird how this kind of happened. But there's a Japanese news reporter there.

43:25

Video videotape out of New York City, out of New York City, out of all the places. Fayetteville, Arkansas, a

43:32

Japanese reporter out of New York City. It's a film in this. Some Christians saying that we're kind of following us around.

43:39

They talked to us in the earlier in the afternoon and they kind of were following us around at that point.

43:47

Kind of our whole group following us around, trying to get clips and things. So if they're listening, you know, Konichiwa to my

43:53

Japanese friends. But no. So we sung hymns. Yeah. So after the parade, then we we broke off into groups.

44:03

We found street corners and began street preaching and having conversations with people.

44:12

So let me let. Yeah. So kind of what we did was Dixon Street is a long street and it has and it has it several blocks long.

44:22

So what we did was we had every corner of that long strip.

44:29

It pretty much Main Street down through Fayetteville. A street preacher, a group of people that were there on every corner.

44:38

So any anywhere somebody walked, they heard preaching. But what we did was.

44:44

We stand. We stood up on a a pedestal of sorts, whether it be a little wall, whether it be a little, you know, whatever it was.

44:55

And we preached out of the Bible. We preached repentance and grace and the wrath to come and the forgiveness we find in Christ.

45:05

And we did that for probably about an hour. Maybe. Yeah.

45:11

Yeah. Something like that. And and while you guys were preaching. So you at the corner we were at, you and Randall were preaching and.

45:24

I think it was just you and Randall, right. That preach. Randall got up first. Yeah. And then and then

45:30

I got up and that was the only that we only did. Right. And then the rest of us.

45:35

Honestly, I didn't hear I didn't hear much of what Randall said, and I didn't hear anything of what you said, because we were involved in one on one.

45:49

Conversations, sometimes very loud conversations with people sharing the gospel.

45:55

We did have another minor incident with the police officers, but that was more of the police officers stepping in because of the vitriol coming from the other.

46:07

The people there were helping you out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we had that. But but I would say some of the best conversations that I had all day.

46:19

That's where they happened. The last hour. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because. Conversations where it really drew out.

46:29

The the the the specific objections to the gospel so that we could.

46:37

Proclaim the good news of Christ, you know, specifically around those objections.

46:43

I will say one of the things that I you know, you talk about homosexuality, it was a gay pride parade.

46:49

But for me, it's the pride part. I really most of the conversations

46:54

I had, I had I tried to drive them back to. As wicked as all the other perversions are.

47:02

You're out here celebrating pride. Yeah. The very thing that the Bible says is going to, you know, it goes before a fall.

47:11

And and so just really tried to share that that message. And so.

47:18

That was kind of the I don't know if you guys heard that. It's the it is

47:24

July 3rd as Gunnar and I are doing this and there's fireworks going off outside.

47:29

And there's a couple we have going off over here. So but. So Gunnar, let's let's kind of I know that we kind of went long here, but let's kind of.

47:39

Let's kind of try to wrap this up just a little bit. I want you to share anything that you want to share, but let's kind of just wrap this up.

47:48

Was there anything we really learned? Any practical things you learned about evangelism?

47:54

Not just not just. The pride parade next year when but just in evangelism in in general, things that you've seen that you thought,

48:04

OK, we can do this different, that different or or things that you were confirmed. Hey, this is the way to do it.

48:10

We did this and this is the way. So a couple of things that I I thought first,

48:18

I thought were good that we we need to keep doing is simply. Handing a tract to somebody is is.

48:28

Is fine and handing a tract to somebody is is a way to get the gospel in somebody's hands.

48:37

That's easy. Yeah, a Christian, every Christian can do it. I don't want to, you know.

48:46

Evangelism isn't something like a mighty mountaintop goal.

48:52

Only the strongest Christians can do evangelism is something that every Christian should be doing, and it could be as simple as giving a tract out.

49:01

So I think tracts are are what we need to keep doing. Another thing. I will say this.

49:10

That you not everybody is called to preach. I don't

49:15

I don't believe everybody is called to preach. However, if the gospel does not come out of your mouth.

49:22

And it's not written down on a track. You can't say

49:28

God loves you and be that be the gospel. You have to give the gospel evangelism is giving the gospel.

49:36

It's not saying God loves you, and it's not saying God, you know,

49:42

God doesn't like your sin. But, you know, he'll he'll he'll forgive you if you would just, you know, just pull yourself up by your bootstrap.

49:53

Try better next time. You must repent. Repentance. Repentance is something we have to keep in evangelism.

50:01

Repentance. One another thing that I thought, even just little things that I thought

50:07

I could do better on. Is when you go hand a gospel track, somebody or talk to somebody.

50:13

Most of the times I catch myself saying, hey, would you like one of these or would you can

50:19

I have a moment of your time? Usually people say no. Yeah. But I usually say is, have you gotten one of these here?

50:27

I want to I want to give you I want to give you this. You know, that's no big deal. That's little things that you'll have to learn.

50:33

But I want to talk just a minute about the preaching. I would not

50:40

I am not a person that I would call myself a seasoned preacher.

50:46

I've preached in my church building two times. And to our church one time.

50:54

And I've done street preaching around. But the more

51:01

I preach and the more that I am extolling the glory of God and reading and preaching the truth.

51:12

The more that I understand and I'm convinced this is the way that God saves.

51:18

There is no other way that God saves other than the preaching of his word. And so it really gives me great assurance that I know this is what

51:30

God is doing in this world, in this country. He is so gracious to give this country preachers that know the word of God.

51:38

And I'm not boasting in myself. I'm boasting that I that I have Christ. This is

51:44

God's word. And I am going to bank my life on it. And I'm going to preach this because I know this is the way that God saves.

51:51

I'm not ashamed of it. This is God. And I think that the preaching is a necessity.

52:03

I just I don't want to be, you know, not nice or whatever.

52:10

But I really just don't see the benefit of you going out and say

52:19

God loves you. Like you're wasting your time, dude. You are wasting your time. And so you need to give the gospel.

52:26

And so, you know, yeah. And I would say I think preaching, you know,

52:31

I think a biblical understanding of preaching. It's the proclamation of the good news.

52:36

Yes. And so and that can happen one on one. That can happen in large groups. However, I want to say after going down there, the opportunity that the heralding, let's say it that way, the heralding of the gospel makes for all of us to share the gospel.

52:57

I mean, you know, I kind of found that, like you said, if you said, do you want one of these or that those that wasn't helpful usually.

53:07

So if you ask a question like, why are you down here today? Or the guy that I talked to that had formerly been a

53:14

Baptist preacher at one time, his shirt, his shirt said, you belong or I belong or something like that.

53:22

And so I asked him about his shirt. What do you mean by that? And that got us into a conversation. So asking questions like that is so helpful.

53:30

But once the once the public preaching started, it got even easier because it was so easy to say.

53:37

So what do you think about what he's saying? And immediately we were right into gospel conversations and opportunities to talk about the truth and about Christ.

53:48

And so can I say one? Yeah, yeah. The one thing that I want to bring out that I that all of us that came to this event, we are all part of a local church.

54:02

Right. All sent out by a local church. None of us were like, I'm just in some ministry apart from the local church.

54:10

I don't have time for the church. I'm doing God's will and evangelizing and preaching, but I'm not a part of a church.

54:17

You're not doing God's will. If you're if you're claiming to do these things, but you don't care about God's church, the way that preachers and evangelists are sent out are by the local church.

54:29

And so that's I think that's a warning. I want to issue that if you're if you're doing these things and you're trusting in your work and saying,

54:38

God's so pleased with me, I'm doing God's will. And you have have nothing to do with the church or your or your at best, very seldom going.

54:48

God is not pleased. That's right. And really, he's warning. And Hebrews, we see a command.

54:56

Don't forsake to meet together, as is the habit of some. So that's that's

55:02

I just wanted to bring that up. Well, no, I'm glad you mentioned that, because I actually had a Christian brother that had seen on Facebook that we had went to this, and he actually sent me a message and was asking that I think it was right for us to go without any connection to a local church there in Fayetteville.

55:22

Like we weren't we weren't we weren't from a local church there in Fayetteville. And I told him,

55:27

I don't think that local churches have jurisdiction over their local area.

55:32

Like if somebody wants to come to Marshall and preach Jesus, they don't need my permission. They don't need

55:37

First Baptist Marshall's permission. However, they knew they do need to be a part of a local church.

55:44

And that's what I told him. I said, as far as I know, all of the men that were involved in this outreach effort, everybody that was there were front were were members in and were sent out by by local churches.

55:58

And so, yeah, we want to say that we want to say that the church should be the ones scattering into the world to share the gospel.

56:07

We gather. We gather together to glorify and worship our God. And then we scatter out into our local communities and beyond for the purpose of sharing the gospel.

56:18

You know, you think about the Apostle Paul and he wanted to go and preach the gospel.

56:24

And this brother actually shared with me, he said, well, didn't Paul tell the Romans that he wanted to go and share the gospel where Christ had not been preached?

56:34

And he did say that in Romans 15. But in Romans chapter one, he told the Romans, I also want to come and preach to you.

56:43

And I think when he says to the Romans, he wants to preach to you. He doesn't only mean that he wants to preach to Roman Christians.

56:49

He means he wants to preach the gospel in Rome to lost people. Yeah. And so this idea that, well,

56:57

I can't I can't go. I can't go anywhere. I'm in Marshall. This is where I'm sure the gospel. Oh, no, we we can go anywhere with the gospel.

57:05

Wherever we go, we should we should take the gospel. Jesus said, therefore, go into all the world.

57:11

And so we should go sharing the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, something else that I would say.

57:20

And this is this was kind of crazy. And we don't have time to tell the whole thing, but there were some other people there preaching.

57:28

OK, we got to talk, OK, just they were they were black

57:35

Hebrew Israelites. I don't know if any of you guys have run into these guys.

57:41

I have before I've seen them in a town near us preaching on the corner.

57:49

Usually they'll have a picture of Jesus that's black, not

57:55

Middle Eastern. He's black. And they say that the gospel is for the remnant, the black.

58:04

These these few these group of black people, then Jesus came for them.

58:10

And it's it's honestly nonsense. Their whole cult is nonsense.

58:17

First of all, Jesus went black. Second of all, don't have a picture of Jesus. That's idolatry.

58:23

No. Right. But they were they called white people rapists.

58:29

They what they call you an Edomite. What do you mean? Yeah, that's what they tell.

58:34

Well, that's that's a part of their their theology. But yeah, it is a very racist message.

58:41

A very is not a gospel message at all. And they weren't opposing the homosexual.

58:47

No, no, no, no. They're preaching against that. They were just preaching to the black people. The reason why

58:53

I wanted to mention them, however, was I think we learned something from something that we can implement from them, not anything in the way they were preaching or their message.

59:03

Of course, that was all bad. But they set up differently than we did.

59:08

They brought like a table and kind of set up a booth. And and my first thought was.

59:16

People here are just going to avoid them. They're just going to walk around. They're just going to not engage them.

59:21

And when they got done with even their racist, angry, vile.

59:30

Yeah. Blasphemous. They were black. People were still coming up to their table and having conversations with them.

59:38

And I and I told you, I said, we should have been set up like that.

59:44

We shouldn't have done what they did. Right. But that shows you that people will still come up, you know.

59:51

And and so I thought, man, that that kind of shows you that you could you could you we could have we could have had an even,

59:58

I think, even more of a presence if we'd have maybe come a little more prepared like that, even though we wouldn't want to do it the way they did it, you know.

01:00:08

Yeah. And they weren't in the shade either. You know, you know, probably not been able to make it over there.

01:00:13

Yeah, I would have fell out. I would make it. So the the the the just in wrapping up,

01:00:22

I think the pride parade as a whole is not something that every Christian has to go to.

01:00:28

It's not the pinnacle evangelist event. You don't get a pat on the back.

01:00:34

You don't get a badge you get to put on and say, I've gone and preached at the gay pride parade. I'm a real evangelist.

01:00:40

This was something that we felt burdened to do because we knew that some of these people probably never heard the gospel.

01:00:49

And and we knew that these were our neighbors. And first and foremost, chiefly,

01:00:58

Christ is worthy. Christ is worthy to have these people repent. Christ is worthy to have the gospel preached.

01:01:03

And maybe they reject him. Christ is still going to get the glory. And so Christ is worthy to have preachers there.

01:01:11

Christ is worthy to have his word proclaimed. And so. It's you know, I don't

01:01:17

I don't don't take us saying you got to go to the worst of, you know, the craziest events, the worst environments, the most hostile environments to actually be a true

01:01:27

Christian. You can go evangelize the people in your town, the person at the local grocery store.

01:01:34

Talk to them, give them a track even and say, here, can

01:01:39

I talk to you about the the king? Christ is king. Can I talk to you about him?

01:01:45

And and and it's simple as that. God is pleased with that. God will get the glory from that.

01:01:51

And then the gospel can be proclaimed, can be proclaimed even in your small little encounters in the people around you.

01:01:58

So I would encourage you, if you're not evangelizing, you need to be. And I know it's hard.

01:02:05

It was hard for me when I started. But evangelize, you need to be obeying

01:02:10

God's word. He is worthy. And and what sweeter place to be than within the will of God?

01:02:19

That's right. Go to the goat fest, go to the go to the fair, go to the harps, but go to Walmart.

01:02:28

Whatever you got, wherever people are, you can you can pass up tracks. You can ask people questions, you know, that lead into gospel conversations.

01:02:38

And you can even preach. And maybe you can't preach, but you can go with somebody that can preach and you can have conversations.

01:02:46

Do what? You said you can't be a woman and do it, though. That's right. That's right. But but but a woman can share the gospel.

01:02:55

Amen. With people. And we want to say that. So every Christian ought to be doing that.

01:03:00

So we'll look for those opportunities. Gunner, I know this is a long episode. Quatro probably want to break it into two pieces.

01:03:08

But my encouragement is going to be just just everybody can endure one really long episode.

01:03:13

But man, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for spending this time with me and kind of going back over these things.

01:03:20

I'm thankful for your partnership in the gospel, brother, and thankful for what the Lord's using you to do.

01:03:26

I know you've got a baby that that could be on the way like any minute. So. Yeah.

01:03:32

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll we're going to sign off and we'll see you guys next week.

01:03:51

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

01:03:57

God's doing. This this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poem of the masterpiece of God.