Episode 48: Fayetteville Parade Recap

The Church Is Not a Democracy but a Monarchy

To the Ruled Church podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom 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?

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. The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be 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 Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Why Evangelism Is Required for Christians

Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast. So you guys hear me, first of all. Normally, you hear Quatro. Well, he's not gonna be with us today, but I do have a special guest. Man, how many times have you been on the Ruled Church podcast now?

Four?

Yeah, I think this is my fourth time. 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. Say hello, Gunner.

Hello, everyone.

Coming to you. Live from Perryville Second Baptist Church.

As a matter of fact, Gunner is sitting in Quatro's seat, drinking from Quatro's coffee mug, using Quatro's microphone. So he's just taking over Quatro's position. He's even doing all of the, kind of the technical side of things for the podcast tonight.

Yeah.

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

And we want to talk a little bit about that, little bit about what the Bible teaches us about evangelism and kind of our motivation to do evangelism. So Gunner, to get us started, I just want us to talk a little bit about why evangelize?

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. 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?

Why evangelize, Gunner?

Well, I mean, sure. You could do all those things if you want to miss out on obeying part of the Bible. And that's Matthew 28, right? No, it's not Matthew 28. Yeah, it's Matthew 28, the great commission, right?

We have this great commission to go and to evangelize, to make disciples, to baptize. 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.

And so I think chiefly the reason we evangelize is because we got to. 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 God and we all want to obey the Bible, we have a love for our neighbors.

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

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. It's really kind of a, I don't want to get too much into some different things.

We're going to talk about.

However, I will say why evangelize? Because preaching is a necessity. No one will become a Christian. No one will be saved unless someone preaches to them, gives them the gospel.

That's right, that's right. And you know, 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 Lord.

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

And I'll tell you the biggest, 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.

And so that love for the Lord then drives a love in us for people. And so I think that's absolutely necessary. However, we know that just because we love them doesn't mean that they're not gonna be opposed to the message, that they're gonna wanna hear it, that they're gonna be excited to hear it.

You were mentioning the Great Commission in Matthew 28, and in 1 Corinthians chapter one, Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, and I just wanna read this. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians chapter one, 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.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning, I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both 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. 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 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. And we ought to expect that men in their natural state are gonna demand signs, Jews demand signs, or they're gonna seek wisdom, Greeks seek wisdom, but they're gonna see the cross as foolishness, and they're gonna hear our message as something other than what it is, unless the Holy Spirit brings a converting work upon their heart.

And so I just wanted to read that as we kind of jump into this. So Gunnar, you're the one that invited me, so tell our audience, where did we go?

Fayetteville Pride Parade and the First Rejection

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

It was

Gunnar, we need to be culturally correct here. It was an LGBTQ plus pride parade.

Oh, I was gonna say homosexual parade, but okay. But we went on a weekend and yeah, we

February, or June 24th, it was June 24th, wasn't it?

Yes, it was.

Yeah.

Yes.

A couple of weeks ago.

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 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 Bible.

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

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 in the evening.

Oh, 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.

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

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.

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

I think even describing it won't be appropriate, but yeah, what do you wanna 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?

Those cops. Yeah, so.

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 gonna 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 University of Arkansas.

So that's where the parade was gonna 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. 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. 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.

It was just trying to.

No, we weren't even, we were just kind of walking around.

Passing out tracks, kind of just having conversations.

With people. Feeling out, what's going on, yeah. We didn't even know what was going on.

Yeah, nothing at all that I would have ever thought of as confrontational. This was far from confrontational, I would have thought, and so we had gotten started. We had had, I don't know, I don't even know.

We'd had several conversations, but they were rather short, you know, but you and I had talked to a few people. Randall had talked to a few people, so we had had a handful of people.

What about those two ladies that we talked to in the beginning? Do you remember those?

Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

The thing that really, one of the things that was big at the parade was like, it's so funny, it's hypocrisy. It was positivity. Like, you're out here to be positive. You're out here to spread love, and like, immediately when we started talking to people, they would judge us.

Like, even just speaking a word, are y '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. That's exactly what we're here with.

Yeah, and so the whole parade, if you've never been to a gay pride parade, and if you're just trying to go, don't, 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.

Like, whatever people are into, that's what people are doing. Except, and they'll accept all that, except for you. Except for what you wanna say, they don't, they're not gonna approve of that.

That's right, that's right.

That's kind of what brings us to the cop scenario.

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

And they were normal. They weren't even doing anything. They weren't even wearing a rainbow or nothing. 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. And so whenever you found someone that was just, T-shirt, pair of shorts, they would really stand out because they look normal.

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

But just before we got into that conversation, we had really didn't even have a conversation. Just Randall, I think, offered this lady a tract. And she did not like him offering her that tract. And she said some things that we wouldn't repeat.

And he added some obscenities.

And used a certain hand gesture toward him. And we didn't think, we just thought, well, okay, whatever. Well, just after that, a lady came by with a young daughter, pretty young child. And the other lady came back and Gunnar and Randall both had body cameras that they were wearing.

Of course, the cameras were not so that we could expose anything. We weren't wearing them for any kind of nefarious purpose other than just protection. In case something was done to us, we can prove that we weren't the aggressors or whatever.

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

In a public place, you have the right to film. You have no expectation of privacy in a public place. And so Randall was standing there, this lady saying that, well, the other lady with the daughter, she then basically said, 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. And it was, I mean, it was almost right behind her, right?

I mean, it was, two police officers came up and they were nice. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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

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

Do you ever think about Hitler and his army and the soldiers? Like, why'd y 'all do that? Well, we're just doing our job. I understand that. Like, I understand them saying it's not our job, but at the same time, they're gonna be held accountable for saying, for the hypocrisy that's going on.

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.

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. I've evangelized to people on the streets.

We've knocked on doors to people in our town. 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, I was not ready for that.

And I thought to myself, what's it gonna be like later on, if this is already happening? We're already getting people to cuss at us. And

That was what struck me too, was that it was such a, I mean, it was very little that we had done.

Yeah.

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

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

Yes.

And so they said, these people that call themselves Christian, these are the perfect targets. Like the woman who said, they have a body cam on, they're trying to exploit your children. 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.

Oh, that's good.

And Christians are the people, Christians are the people.

Yeah, you're right. So let's move. So now we're outside. So what's the next thing that you wanna share that happened? I mean, we can't share everything, but what happened next?

Gospel Tracts, Public Witness, and the Hostility of the Crowd

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 like 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 gonna have a gospel track in their hand. And we wanna talk to people. Usually what happened was you just pass them a track. There's some people that think, you gotta have a 20 minute conversation.

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

And so we had a bunch of groups. What we did was we gave tracks to people. When people said something, we encouraged them. We gave them the gospel. Hey, this is what this card means. You can have hope in Christ.

God forgives the sin of homosexuality. I even talked about people that, God not only forgives the sin of homosexuality, but of you approving of homosexuality, even if you're not one. If you're coming to this event, approving of it, that you need to repent, but God forgives that sin if you come to Christ.

So we got an area, stood up, gave tracks. We talked to people. Usually it was, I would say like 60, 40, 60 bad, 40 people just took them, went on their way.

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

Yeah.

And I'm like, first of all, we paid for those. Second of all, we paid for the trash can. Like it's your aunt, or they would put them not in just in the trash can. They would set them next to the trash can.

I'm like, and I hollered at people, like if you're gonna throw it away, just give it back. Right. Recycle these tracks.

Which brings up a story I think we should tell because I do want to highlight, I don't wanna make it sound like, man, everybody was just so against, now they were against us. They were rejecting the gospel, but I think we wanna be fair.

We of course wanna be fair. So we had one encounter. So these two guys.

One was dressed as a woman.

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

Yeah. Visibly, noticeably males.

Right, you could tell that, right. But Gunnar handed, you handed the one nearest to you a track, and I guess I handed the other guy a track, and that guy ripped it up and threw it on the ground.

Right, no, yeah, and this is literally right in front, within arm's length.

Yeah, yeah, within two feet of us. And then the one that you had handed the track to, he nicely handed it back to you, and he actually picked up the ripped track and handed it back to you. And I have to say, I'm gonna give him credit that he was trying to not be, now he still didn't want to hear the gospel.

Of course, he handed you the track back. He rejected the gospel, and he's gonna have to answer for that before the Lord. But I do think it's important that we don't wanna paint it like

These are 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 this anger and bitterness, and maybe the other guy who, honestly, looked to me like he clearly knew that what he was doing was wrong.

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, I think. I mean, that was my interpretation of the way that went down.

Yeah, I would agree that not everyone was horrible. However, the whole pride parade as a whole, if you walk in there and you confess Christ, if you have a Bible in your hand, whatever, and even if you don't, people notice you're not in with the whole parade, but it's like, they hate you.

They literally, it's not like, hey, I'm like, oh, I'm just not cool with your views, but we're still okay. 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, 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. I've heard that before. Or they would say, yo, yeah, man, appreciate it. But there's 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 yelling at you, some sexual stuff I've never even like thought about.

And because you just tell them, because you hand them a piece of paper that says, Jesus saves you. I think our card said, turn from sin, turn to Jesus. And it had an arrow on it. Nothing like gay people are going to hell or anything like that.

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

They didn't greet that conviction with, okay, you know what, I ought to repent. They greeted it with hatred and they doubled down and they pushed it deep down inside of themselves. And they put their feelings out on the prophets.

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.

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 the

What Grieved Us Most: Transgenderism, Old Men in Sin, and Children at the Parade

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. 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. 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.

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

We understand that, but these men are closer to death than we are and they love their sin. They hate God and they rejoice in their misdeeds and their iniquities and they do it. They shout it. The third thing I would say was probably all the children there.

Yep, that was my number one thing I was gonna say.

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

And small children, impressionable children seeing this.

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

Old enough to understand, but young enough to be impressed.

And not be able to push back and not be able to, they're being forced to do this. And it was horrible. I thought of my own children and honestly, I thought of the blessings I have in Christ that my children are not here.

That God has not let me keep doing what I was doing, keep following the ways of the world. And I could have been easily the one bringing my child to this event. And really it gripped me with the grace that God has given me, honestly.

I thought going into it that I would be very angry and that I would be short-tempered and I would, 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.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I had, that was at the top of my list, the children. I was just, my children are teenagers and I couldn't imagine exposing my children to that on purpose, on purpose, exposing my children to that.

Even my oldest son is 16. And being down there, I was like, I would not have even wanted to have brought him to help us pass out tracts with what we were seeing. Even though he would have clearly understood that this was wickedness, he would have clearly understood that we're here to share the gospel.

I'm like, no way.

You can't unsee that stuff.

But you can't unsee that, right. And so just brokenhearted over all the children. I mean, so many children. The second thing was professing Christians.

Yeah, honestly, yes, that's right.

You know, we went to give a tract to one lady and she said, oh, I don't need that. And you could tell that she was in support of everything there, that she had something rainbow on. But she said, I don't need that.

I'm an ordained Methodist minister. And of course we know that women can't be pastors and all those, but I'm saying, let's even put that doctrinal distinction aside for a moment. This woman is claiming that she is a believer in Christ.

So she didn't need our tract, but she's in support of the things happening down there. 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. And he was formerly a Baptist preacher. And he had left the service. He had left, I mean, we know that he was apostate. He was not believing. He had never believed the gospel, but he had left even the pretense of the gospel for this perversion.

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

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

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.

Men wearing the stuff and with the woman carrying the leash.

Yeah, it was just, it was, that was so grievous to me. I mean, all of this is so, it's at war with the image of God.

Yeah.

It's at war with the Imago Dei. And it was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking to see that they would prefer to align with animals than to be aligned with the God of the universe who created them. And that was so grievous, you know, to see those things going on.

It was just horrible. Well, let's move it along a little bit. So that was most of the afternoon, passing out tracks. You passed out, I will say this, Gunner is the tracked, man, he's the tracked passer-outer.

In the, I don't know if it was the heat or just what we were seeing, but I got a little bit, I didn't feel well for a little while. So I sat down.

No, you fell out, dude. You couldn't hang with the big ones.

Yeah, I fell out. 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 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.

And so we had walked back to that house. And then I do want to point this out. As we were coming back, Gunner, you pointed out, just, you know, we've seen this event and the depravity that was on display.

And you pointed out that God would be righteous and holy to judge. I mean, to just swallow up everyone there in judgment because of the wickedness that was on display. And that just made me realize, and you've already mentioned this, but man, 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. I mean, everyone's there. The wickedness that was on display, it just made me see all the more clearly God's grace.

God's grace is also on display whenever we see, or His mercy, His forbearance is on display whenever we see that kind of wickedness. And it doesn't mean that God's not gonna judge. 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.

How much patience does God show in a 30 ,000 people cursing Him, like breathing His air with one breath and one breath breathing it and the next breath cursing Him.

That's right.

They're walking on His ground. Every step they take is judgment. Like, yeah, that's what I was saying. God would be just. Why would God not just let us fall into hell?