October 26, 2023 Show with Ryan Hartzel on “Tips on Declaring the Gospel to Strangers”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 26th day of October 2023.

And I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today, a young man who has been very impressive to me and also a blessing to me to witness his evangelistic zeal and passion to bring the gospel to the lost.

His name is Ryan Hartzell. He is a Reformed Baptist open -air evangelist, and today we're going to be discussing tips on declaring the gospel to strangers and overcoming obstacles when opposed.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ryan Hartzell.

Thank you, Chris. It is a joy to be here with you. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, me too, brother.

And I am going to give our listeners our email address right away so that they can submit questions to you if they have any that come to mind during our conversation.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Well, Ryan, as our tradition has it on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we have a first time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and also the kinds of providential experiences that our sovereign

Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. So let's hear your story. Absolutely.

So I grew up in a home where we went to a

Roman Catholic church and I was baptized in a Roman Catholic church. But it was really just our family's tradition.

I really had no idea what was going on. And then I was about 12 years old. One of our neighbors invited my mom to go to an evangelical church in our town.

And my mom went to this church and then my family started going as well. And we would mainly just go on Christmas and Easter.

And then every once in a while we would go throughout the year, but we would stop going when we would say we would get too busy.

So I thought I was a Christian growing up. I thought if you go to church, that automatically makes you a

Christian. I thought I was a good person because I was comparing myself to my friends.

And it wasn't until I was 24 years old where the Lord really turned the world upside down for me.

My mom had severe anxiety and depression since I was about 18 years old.

And from 18 to 24, my mom would try to commit suicide.

And it was very difficult for our family. Yes, and when

I was 24 years old, I was out in New Jersey at a track and field coaching clinic because my undergrad was in exercise science.

So I've spent years coaching and training athletes. So I was there being trained to be a more effective coach.

And no one was home with my mom back in Enola, Pennsylvania. And she went out for a run that day.

And her goal was not to come back from that run. And she actually ran out in front of a car and was run over by that car.

And she did live through it. It was a miracle by God's grace. She was flown to the

ICU where she spent a whole week. And then after the week in the ICU, she was in the general hospital.

And then she came home and we really had to take care of her. As you can imagine, the amount of injuries that she had and the surgeries that she had lined up after she had gotten out of the hospital, it was very difficult for all of us.

And my world was, like I said, turned upside down. I didn't know what

I really wanted to do in my life. Things were falling apart with my family.

And it wasn't just things outside of me that I knew were going haywire. I knew there was something wrong on the inside of me.

I knew that I had a heart issue because my conscience had been killing me for years.

I would be convicted of my sin, but I would just suppress that truth. I would not want to deal with it.

But right after my mom got back from the hospital, I had this desire for the first time in my life, and that was to read the

Bible. And before that, I mean, I had no desire ever to read the scriptures. I would try to because I thought that's what good

Christians do. But it would just be like a newspaper to me. But I'll tell you, the moment

I opened up the Bible after my mom got back from the hospital, I knew that was

God's word and I was in the Gospel of John. And I just remember being mesmerized by the word of God.

And I was quickly convicted of my sins. I read Matthew, Mark, Luke and then the rest of the

New Testament. And this is over the summer of 2016. And at some point during that summer, the

Lord brought me from death to life. And I repented of my sins and placed my faith in Christ alone.

And I remember then walking in to the Hershey Medical Center, a nearby hospital for us.

And my mom was getting another surgery. And I remember just knowing that Christ lived in me.

I was a new creation. I had this love for God in my heart and I had this love for my neighbor that I never had before.

And this desire immediately to go make Christ known. I didn't even really know what the

Great Commission was. I just knew I'd been saved from my sins and the wrath of God and been given eternal life.

And I had to share this with other people. I could not hold it in.

It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, the Lord saving me.

And I wanted people desperately to know the grace of God like I now knew it.

Well, praise God. And by the way, folks, I forgot to mention when I introduced Ryan that we met in a very unusual way by God's providence.

The reason why I say it is unusual is because we're both from Pennsylvania and not only both from Pennsylvania, we're only about a half hour away from each other as far as where we live.

And yet I met Ryan in Denton, Texas, at the

Bible church, the Denton Bible church. And there was a conference there, and I believe it was dealing with the woke movement in particular.

It was a it was a an expose, a critique, a condemnation of woke theology.

And I was sitting there at my Iron Troupe and Zion Radio exhibitors booth, and this young man comes up to my booth and starts greeting me and asking me a couple of questions.

And I look at his name tag and it says Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. And I said, you're from Mechanicsburg.

I said, I'm from Carlisle. And it wasn't long after that that Ryan joined the same church where I am a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. So I just thought I'd throw that out there. It's never ceases to amaze me what

God's providence will bring about in the lives of his people. And so as far as your understanding of doctrine and theology, how did you become introduced to the doctrines of sovereign grace and come to embrace and love them?

That's a great question. So I knew right off the bat that I did not choose

Christ. I knew that he chose me because I went from really being ignorant to God, hating

God, not wanting anything to do with the word of God to all of a sudden loving

God and wanting to be in the scriptures, loving Christ, wanting to make him known like something radically transformative has happened in my soul that I did not do because it was like I was walking around in a dark room and all of a sudden the lights were turned on.

I came to life. So before I was saved, I was big into hip hop.

And not a very godly form of hip hop either. So I was converted and knew

I did not want to listen to that garbage anymore, not hear about drugs and sex and money and all that.

So I quickly looked up Christian hip hop and I discovered this one guy named

Shilin and Timothy Brindle. And they're both reformed men who really use hip hop as a platform to preach sound doctrine.

I mean, I wouldn't even call it just Christian hip hop. I would just call it lyrical theology.

So I'm reading through my Bible. I really didn't have anyone discipling me. And I'm listening to Shilin and I'm hearing these songs like Regeneration.

And he has an album called The Attributes of God. I'm like, wow, this is all found in scripture.

And he has one song called Election. And I'm like, no way this is the truth.

This is what I see in Romans nine. This is what I see in Ephesians one. And it's all lining up.

So I really became reformed through listening to Shilin and came to love and embrace the doctrines of grace.

So I'm so grateful to God for that brother. I'd love to meet him one day and share my story with him.

I'm sure he's heard it many times from other people as well. Well, interestingly enough, another providential connection here.

My former co -host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Buzz Taylor, who now lives in Massachusetts, but he used to live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and he worked for a couple of trucking companies and he was designated to instruct some new employees or actually they weren't even employees yet.

They had to pass the driving test to see if they were qualified to become employees.

And one of those people was Shilin and he was so bad at it that Buzz recognized he could never be a truck driver.

I'm not sure he didn't explain the details. Maybe they almost maybe shy, almost killed Buzz when he was in the truck with him.

I don't know, but he just could tell that the driving a truck was not in Shilin's future.

So he actually gave him a an extra car, used car that he owned, meaning

Buzz gave it to Shilin. And this is obviously long before he became a

Christian rapper or Christian hip hop artist. But I just thought

I'd throw that out there as well. Kind of an interesting providential connection. I love that.

So where did you come to develop an interest in an actual eventually participation in open air preaching?

Yeah, so the moment I was saved, I knew I wanted to take the gospel to the lost, but I really had no idea what

I was doing. And I remember looking up online ways to evangelize.

So I ordered some gospel tracks and I remember passing them out for the first time in a local giant grocery store.

And going up to this one older man and I was so scared,

I was shaking as I reached my arm out to give him that gospel track. And you never would have guessed that there was a time when you were like that.

You're so extroverted now and aggressive and aggressive in a good way in a in a what's the word

I'm looking for? A gregarious and passionate way you are reaching out to the lost.

But anyway, go ahead. Yeah, that's definitely what most people say, but that was where it all started with my evangelistic efforts.

And then from there, I just started out engaging people in conversations, usually starting with gospel tracks as somewhat of an icebreaker.

And I did that for about four years. And I went to Bethlehem College and Seminary out in Minneapolis, Minnesota, John Pipers School in 2020.

And my roommate, his name was Stephen Clayton, and he was an open air preacher.

He would go yeah, he would go to abortion mills every Saturday. And I kid you not,

I thought he was crazy. What led you to that conclusion?

I'm just like this guy's out on a street corner preaching the gospel. What good is that ever going to do?

And you know what? Now that I think back on it, that was just my own flesh talking.

I was fearful. I was convicted because I knew I had such a heart for the lost and I wanted to get the gospel to as many people as I could.

And open air preaching is definitely a way to go about doing that. And I knew

God had called me to preach. So why not preach on a street corner or a college campus at an abortion mill?

So I was really just convicted. And he would invite me to come out on Saturday mornings, and I'd always tell him, no,

I don't want to do that. And then I came back home after a semester at Bethlehem College and Seminary, and that's when

I joined Grace Baptist Church and was very encouraged by the folks there because they saw that I had an evangelistic zeal and they were saying, you know, you should get out there.

No one ever said anything about open air preaching, but I'm on YouTube a lot watching sermons and I would start to see open air preaching videos come up every once in a while.

Someone like Ryan Denton, who you've had on the show. Yes. Mm hmm. Yes, he wrote the book

A Certain Sound, which is about open air preaching.

He co -authored it and very much enjoyed interviewing

Ryan on a number of occasions. Yeah, so I actually picked up that book then after listening to him on YouTube and I'm reading the book and I actually went through the book multiple times.

I knew God was calling me to get out there and lift up the name of Christ in the public square.

But again, I was just too afraid to go out and do it. So fast forward to a

Sunday morning. This is the fall of 2022. And we are finishing up with the

Sunday morning service. And one of the older gentlemen in Grace Baptist Church came up to me and said, you know,

Ryan, there's some preachers in the back that you should go and talk to. And I said, oh, cool, absolutely.

So I go back there and I meet these three preachers. Turns out they're open air preachers.

One of them is Scott Smith. Oh, yeah. Yes. Who co -authored the book with Ryan Denton and then

Jimmy Hamilton, who's known as the street preacher of the UK. The guy's been preaching in the streets for,

I think, 40 years faithfully. It's just amazing. And he's 79 now.

And then Don Carnes, who's another faithful open air preacher. And I'm talking with these guys in the back and Scott Smith said, are you interested in open air preaching?

Have you done it before? And I said, I haven't done it before. I'll be honest with you. I'm just afraid to get out there. I don't know anyone around here doing it.

I want to see it modeled for me. He goes, well, in the spring, why don't you come down to Raleigh and I'll train you?

So. This past spring, 2023 in March, I went down to Raleigh, North Carolina, and Scott Smith and some of the other brothers down there like Joe Toy and Tommy Waltz, they all trained me for a week in open air preaching.

And I just fell in love with it and have been open air preaching ever since.

So I am indebted to these brothers who really poured into me and I've been able to preach with them and continue to preach with them and learn so many different tools to the trade from these men.

Amen. Well, we're going to be going to our first commercial break, and when we come back, we'll have you continue to address the theme at hand for us.

And once again, that theme that we are going to be focusing on today is tips on declaring the gospel to strangers and overcoming obstacles when opposed.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Chris Arnsen at gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Ryan Denton.

I'm sorry, Ryan. Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the

Sunday school classroom or the small group study? So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study

God's word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the word of God and is built upon sound doctrine.

Much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the Bible. Hi there.

My name is Jordan, too, and I am the executive director of the Baptist Publishing House. Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound

Bible study resources. Our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor. And for good reason, we are

Baptist and we exegete the scriptures. If you want to have a curriculum that teaches your people how to study the word of God, I invite you go to our website, download a free study,

Baptist Publishing House dot com. May God bless you. I'm Brian McLaughlin, president of the

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And we are now back with my guest today, Ryan Hartzell, not Ryan Denton, as I said when

I was entering into the commercial break. We are discussing a very interesting theme today, tips on declaring the gospel to strangers and overcoming obstacles when opposed.

And you were right before the break talking about how fearful you were initially approaching strangers with something as simple as handing them a tract.

Other than the old adage of practice makes perfect, was there anything else that helped you to overcome that initial fear that you had?

Yeah, absolutely. Of course, it's the grace of God in me. Of course.

So it really came down to continuing to study the scriptures and see that.

For example, in the book of Acts, this is what Christians do. You go out and you proclaim the gospel, and I wasn't seeing it happen much around me, and I had to continually go back to what the word of God says.

I would draw some strength from watching other brothers online proclaiming the gospel, and it came down to the fact that I simply cared more about the approval of men than I did the approval of God.

My fear was stemming from a fear of man, and I wasn't fearing

God enough, and I was concerned about what people would think of me, that they would think

I was weird, some religious nut, or they would have some different view of me, especially folks that I grew up with, friends, family members.

But I really just had to put that aside and care more about where people are going to spend eternity than what people think about me and just continue to press on.

And yes, the more I did it, the more I became comfortable with doing it, really just training myself to deal with the unconverted, even in just passing out gospel tracts like we talked about and going up to strangers, really looking out and having deep compassion on them, like Jesus in Matthew 9.

He sees the vast multitudes, and he sees that they are lost, they're harassed, they're sheep without a shepherd, and constantly preaching that truth to myself.

Yeah, so I'm imagining that one of the things that would embolden you, that would give you more confidence and perhaps even more zeal when proclaiming the gospel in public to strangers, is your belief in the doctrines of sovereign grace, because you are given that added encouragement that the word of God will not return void, that even if you, for a lengthy period of time, experienced what would seem to be outwardly a fruitless endeavor, where nobody is responding in a favorable way, nobody is even demonstrating interest of any kind.

In fact, they might not only be indifferent, but they may be even hostile and angry and insulting and mocking.

And I don't know if you've experienced this yet, but they might even be violent toward you. But at the end of the day, eventually those seeds are going to be watered in God's sovereignty and providence, either by you, by returning to the same place to evangelize, or by other

Christians, and then he, God himself, will give the increase. That is not our job.

Our job is not actually saving sinners. We have no ability or power or authority to do that.

But the role that he has given us to declare the good news, it's not going to be a waste of time ever for a

Christian when he's being obedient to God, is it? Amen. So we go out with complete confidence in God and in God's word.

Like you said, the word of God never returns void. It goes forth and accomplishes all that God has purposed for it.

And God has his elect out there. We don't know who they are, so we preach the general gospel call to every single human being that we come in contact with.

Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. So we want to be obedient to that and preach.

And it's only God who makes the inward call to his elect, those he's chosen from before the foundation of the world.

Christ's sheep hear his voice and they follow him. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.

Like the Apostle Paul said, I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.

So you're right. We're just planting. We're watering seeds. Salvation is not of us.

Salvation is of the Lord. So it takes that burden off our back.

And people will often say to me, Ryan, how many people did you save today? I'll say, what are you talking about?

Me saving? I can't save anyone. The Lord saves. The question is, Ryan, were you faithful?

And what is faithfulness? That's simply proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, getting it into people's ears and leaving the results up to our sovereign

God and the chips are going to fall where God wants them to fall. And besides all of that, our ultimate goal, first and foremost, our primary goal is to glorify

God. Even if in the lifetime of an evangelist who lived to a ripe old age, if he lived to 100 years old and not a single convert came to Christ to his knowledge through his evangelistic ministry, if he was being a faithful servant and ambassador for Christ, God was glorified nonetheless.

Is that not true? Amen. Amen. Just like the chief end of man is to glorify

God, well, the chief end of evangelism is to glorify

God. And God is glorified every time the gospel is preached.

So even if no one is saved, God is glorified. And in fact, I highly recommend a book that Ryan Denton wrote called

Even If None, because you hear oftentimes, yeah, oftentimes in American evangelicalism, they'll say only for the one.

Well, even if no one's saved, your gospel preaching brings God glory.

And that is preeminently the goal. Yeah, it is a tragedy that Christian organizations, denominations, mission boards that are typically outside of the theology that you and I embrace, embrace sovereign grace.

It's a tragedy that you hear stories about. And I have many friends in the

Southern Baptist Convention, and those friends that I have will be the first to admit that what

I'm saying is true. There is a trend amongst mission boards in the

Southern Baptist Convention, which in our day and age are not typically theologically reformed.

At one time, the Southern Baptist Convention in its early days in the 19th century was completely theologically reformed.

And now it's a minority if you are in that group in the Southern Baptist Convention. But they will pull people off the mission field very prematurely just because they are totally fixated on numeric growth, numeric converts, et cetera, numeric results as far as people reciting a sinner's prayer and on and on I could go.

And God's timetable isn't necessarily ours, is it? That's right.

That's right. God is going to save his people when he is going to save his people.

So pulling people off the mission field because they're not seeing conversions is really just nonsense and shows that there's a lack of understanding of sound doctrine.

And this is why you'll see people lead folks in a sinner's prayer to get this person converted.

No, we don't preach a decision. We preach regeneration. You must be born again.

And it's God who sovereignly regenerates a dead heart.

Amen. And let's see here. We have

Lila in Aquabog, Long Island, New York. And Lila asks, have you ever heard of the ministry

Jeremiah Cry, which is a ministry focusing on the need for open air evangelism?

Oh, I've heard of them. I don't know if you have. Yeah, I definitely have and have really benefited from their ministry.

They have a lot of videos on YouTube. Jeff Rose is the one who started that ministry.

I've had Jeff on the show. In fact, I've just recently been in contact with Jeff. He was recommending someone for me to interview.

And he is now he's relocated. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas now and is pastor, senior pastor at 116

Bible Church and look forward to having him back on the program. But I'm sure if Jeff is listening, he'll be thrilled to know that you are fully aware of his ministry and blessed by it.

Absolutely. I highly recommend their ministry to any man who wants to get involved in open air preaching.

There are just so many resources there to help you get started. I mean, they're all about raising up more open air preachers.

And I say the more open air preaching, the better. And I know some of you listening to this might be a little convicted like I was first when

I heard of open air preaching. And it's probably because you need to be out there lifting up the name of Christ on a street corner, college campus, abortion mill, wherever souls gather.

Amen. And by the way, I have the website for you, folks, if you want to find out more about that ministry, it's jeremiahcry .com.

If you want to shoot an email to Jeff Rose, his email address is thunderitoutatgmail .com.

I love that email address, thunderitoutatgmail .com. Let's see here.

We have Bruce in Westchester, New York.

And Bruce says, in your experience of open air evangelism, are those who share your beliefs in reform theology a tiny minority?

Yeah, I would say so. So most of the reformed open air preachers

I know at this point, I haven't met Jeff Rose. I'd love to meet him and preach with him soon down in the stockyards.

But a lot of the guys on the East Coast I've met and have preached with. So sadly, it is a smaller minority.

That's what it seems like. What you get a lot of are what I would call shock and awe preachers.

And they're usually semi -Pelagian and they have massive signs.

It kind of looks like it's an army or something like that. And they're usually yelling at people, lots of name calling, usually only preaching judgment, which, of course, we have to preach judgment and sin, but they leave out the gospel, the good news that Christ came into the world to save sinners.

They're not very approachable. So when we're open air preaching, we're preaching the word. We got our Bibles in our hands and we invite people to come up and engage with us.

And in fact, the people who engage with us often draw a bigger crowd then because people want to listen in, especially if the person is heckling you.

Hecklers actually bring you a crowd. So a heckler can be a blessing because more people are then going to be listening to you preach the gospel and handle this person with grace as they may be spitting in your face.

Well, I will make it a point to try to follow you as often as I can to heckle you while you're preaching.

Yes, I have heard the same thing that you are saying from the folks who are theologically reformed, sovereign grace believing open air evangelists.

And they'll even go further and say that many of them are not churchmen.

They're mavericks. They are under the authority of no one in a local church. They're not a member of a local church.

They don't have elders. Now, of course, I'm not broad brushing here. There are folks of all stripes who do open air evangelism.

And even those that are non -Calvinist on occasion will be members of churches and even pastors of churches.

But I have heard that it's far too often the fact that these people who profess to be

Christians make the jobs of biblically sound open air evangelists more difficult because of the damage that they have to undo.

It's like a cleanup time in aisle five because in fact, some of these folks have destroyed or brought great harm, at least, to a thriving open air ministry that James White was leading for many, many years, over two decades,

I believe. And not only in the Phoenix, Arizona area, but in Utah, where he would do a lot of open air evangelism and passing out of tracts and so forth whenever there was a major Mormon event.

And unfortunately, some other groups or individuals began to hear about these events as well.

And they are the kind of open air evangelists that you were mentioning who do little more than scold people, mock people, make fun of people.

And are not a member of any church. And some of these people in the area of the

Mormon events, they were holding up Mormon underwear and they were holding up effigies of Joseph Smith and, you know, really counterproductive things that had nothing to do with the gospel.

They were there just in the same vein as the God hates fags folks from Westboro Baptist Church.

And by the way, James White has also had an encounter with them as well. In fact, he had an encounter with Fred Phelps before he passed, years before he passed.

And Mr. Phelps declared the judgment and wrath upon James White for disagreeing with him in his approach.

And that's a key thing, isn't it, that you are not only there, first and foremost, as we already said, to glorify

God, but you're there on a mission not to tell people,

I am better than you. You should be like me. You're there on a mission of compassion where you want people to benefit from the same cure that you needed to prevent you from going to hell.

The one and only cure, which is Jesus Christ and his gospel. And I love the and I don't have the quote in front of me, but so I might not say it exactly as the late

Dr. R .C. Sproul said it, but Sproul was actually quoting somebody else in the quote that I read.

He did not mention the source, but he said that basically, we are all beggars and the difference between us and the lost is that the beggars who are

Christians point to the lost where the food is. And that's, you know, we're not to be acting as if we're superior, but to let people know that we were in the same plight that they were in, made from the same lump of clay and headed for hell.

But we were rescued, thanks be to God, by his grace and mercy. Amen, amen.

Yeah, evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where the bread is at.

And even if the people hate what I'm saying,

I don't want them to deny the fact that I care for them and love them.

I want them to hear that compassion in my voice because I want them to be saved.

Yes, first and foremost, we're out there to glorify God, but we do want lost sinners to be rescued from the wrath of God.

And I have to preach that reality to myself before I go out.

So I go out there as a brokenhearted, Bible -saturated preacher declaring to lost individuals the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

I'm just thinking of some quotes that Spurgeon had. He's the most quotable human being, and I love what he says.

And he devoted two whole chapters in lectures to my students for open -air preaching.

So Spurgeon was definitely a proponent of preaching outside of doors.

I actually conducted an interview not long ago on that very theme. Oh, nice. Yes, Spurgeon, what an encouragement.

He said, go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. I'll bet in constitutes part of a parable is worthy to be taken very literally.

And in doing so, its meaning will be best carried out. We ought actually to go into the streets and lanes and highways for there are lurkers in the hedges, tramps on the highway, streetwalkers and lane hunters when we shall never reach unless we pursue them in their own domains.

So we have so few people actually coming in to churches. When we look at the whole population of our communities, most of the lost people are outside the church walls.

So we need to go out there. And it's the most loving thing that we can do. The greatest expression of love for neighbor is to share the good news of the gospel with them.

Yeah, I'd just like to point to my listeners, our listeners, I should say, that if you want to hear that interview that I conducted on August 7th with Ed Romine, pastor of education and evangelism at First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah, speaking of Mormons, we conducted the interview on the open air preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

And I believe if I'm not mistaken, this is the theme of Ed Romine's doctoral dissertation.

So all you have to do is all you have to do is go to ironsharponsirenradio .com and type in Romine, R -O -M as in Michael, I -N as in Nancy, E, Ed Romine.

And that will come up and you can take advantage of that. So let's see, we have

Cheryl in Solana Beach, California.

And Cheryl says, early on in the program, Chris Arnzen mentioned the fact that open air evangelists may risk having violence enacted upon them from their hearers.

Has that happened to your guest yet? Nothing too serious.

I was down in Washington, D .C., in Chinatown, and there was a transvestite who was listening to me preach, heard the gospel.

Praise God for that. They just took their cigarette and threw it at me. That was the closest thing

I had until a couple of weeks ago, I was preaching at a pumpkin fest in a local town and there was an older lady, she approached me and she was saying that she wanted to have a word with me.

And I said, yeah, ma 'am, what questions you have? I'd love to talk to you. And she ripped my headset off of my head and tried to speak into my mic.

And then she tried to poke me in the eye and I kind of juked her out.

It was pretty wild. You juked her out? Yeah. What do you mean by that? What do you mean you juked her out?

I juked her out. So her hands were coming and I kind of shifted to the side real quick.

Yeah. I had this image of you actually having a fistfight with her.

No, that did not happen. But it drew a crowd. I will say that there were tons of people listening to the gospel after that.

Well, again, I'll have to come to one of your next meetings and beat the snot out of you. And of course, knowing you and your zeal and your passion,

I could readily believe that you are more than willing to risk even worse to spread the gospel publicly.

Amen. It's humbling to look at church history and the

Apostle Paul and Peter, what they went through to preach the gospel. It makes me feel like a little lightweight compared to the things that they went through.

But we really must risk it all for the sake of Christ. Amen. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

Please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks. Because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because the FCC requires of them to localize

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida. They do so with their own public service announcements and other local things.

We, on the other hand, simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. Please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers, keeping in mind that we absolutely positively depend on our advertisers and the funding that comes from them to exist.

But also use this time, obviously, to send in your question to Ryan Hartzell on Open Air Evangelism, to ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.

ChrisOrenson at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Do not go away. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sherpins Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. Hi, I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sherpins Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sherpins Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sherpins Iron Radio, Dr.

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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Before I return to Ryan Hartzell and our conversation on open -air evangelism,

I just have a couple of very important subjects to bring up.

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. Last but not least, if you're not a member of a

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As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And we do have a listener who is a very faithful, loyal listener in our audience from Asheboro, North Carolina.

He's also a very loyal and generous financial supporter of this program. Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina says,

Greetings, brothers. Have you run into any black Hebrew Israelites? I've been told that they're notorious for trying to drown your message out when they confront you.

Also, what cities have you been in besides Washington, D .C. and Raleigh, North Carolina?

Yeah, so I have run into the black Hebrew Israelites. Now, I haven't really engaged them.

It was mainly down in Washington, D .C. But I did see what they usually do with other preachers, and they do try to drown you out.

And if you try to engage with them, they usually stand in a line, almost like a military formation, and kind of just yell

Bible verses back at you. They're very hard to engage.

It's an interesting cult. I've also— I do know someone who was saved out of that cult.

Um, Oscar Dunlap, who I have interviewed on this program, he is a deacon at Apologia Church now in Phoenix, Arizona.

And he came to Christ after witnessing James White debate one of their leaders.

Wow, praise the Lord. That's the power of the gospel. Amen. So I've also preached on several college campuses.

Delaware, I went to VCU, I went to Southern Connecticut State University, and I preached then in Connecticut, New Haven, Connecticut.

I preached in Boston. That's a wonderful place to preach.

We preached right where Whitfield had preached in the Boston Commons. Wow. That was really cool.

I've been to D .C. a bunch of times with a good brother, Ken Tuxelowski.

And I do preaching in Pittsburgh. I've been there. And of course, every smaller city around Central Pennsylvania I've preached in.

And I went to Louisville, Kentucky. We went to the Kentucky Derby. That was a wonderful time, led by another faithful open -air preacher,

Bobby McCreary. Oh, I know Bobby. Yeah. And the next time you speak to Bobby, you got to tell him that I'm getting annoyed with him for always putting off being a guest on my show.

I will. I'll put that in his ear. Whenever I see him at a conference and I'm manning an exhibitor's booth and interviewing people live on site, he never gets around to coming back to the booth for an interview.

Yeah. But a precious brother. And people think I know a lot of people.

He seems to know more people than I know. So a wonderful, wonderful brother.

And by the way, I'm giving a shout out now to Charlie Liebert, a founder of 6daycreation .com,

and his wife, Terry, and Devin Crawford, who is a member of the same church that the

Lieberts attend, that is Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle.

They are listening to our discussion right now, Ryan, so I just thought

I'd encourage you to let you know that they are enjoying this interview very much.

Charlie says it's a great show. Thanks a lot, Charlie, for that word of encouragement. Well, I think it'd be wise for us to start with do's and don'ts that you recommend to either absolutely positively incorporate into evangelism of strangers, but also those things that you should avoid at all costs.

Maybe we should start with the don'ts as far as things that you, perhaps, were mistakes that you made yourself, or mistakes that you've witnessed, or mistakes that you have heard about from your colleagues in ministry who are a part of the same kind of ministry that you are part of.

What are the most common mistakes you think that are made by well -meaning, well -intentioned, open -air evangelists?

That's a really good question. I love that. I think one of the biggest mistakes, and it's one that I made, was focusing solely on the person's intellect and then never getting to the heart of the matter, and that's that their heart is the matter, not appealing to their conscience, and just continuing on with apologetics, which are wonderful.

We need to use apologetics, but I would stay in that spot too long and I would never turn the conversation to address the conscience by using the law of God, and I think our pride can get in the way at times because we want to win arguments, but I always have to remind myself that we are out there to win souls, not win arguments.

We don't want to just win the argument. No, we want to get people the gospel of Jesus Christ and pray that the

Lord converts them. I think that's one of the mistakes. In an open -air evangelism,

I always remind people to have their Bible in their hand. You want people to know where you're getting this truth from, which is the word of God.

You don't want to just be standing up there. You want to have the Bible up. You want to be reading from the scriptures.

I'm a fan of preaching expositionally in the open air, but there's obviously other ways that you can go about doing it, like stoplight preaching.

You can preach for 45 seconds to people who are sitting there and just do a quick law gospel and just go law gospel, law gospel, kind of in a loop.

I would also say we have to constantly be checking our hearts because most men who are open -air preaching are often bold and we don't want that to lead to arrogance.

So we constantly want to be in prayer and we always need to be checking our hearts as well for our motives as to why we're out there.

We don't want people to think that we're holier than thou. No, we are sinners saved by the grace of God.

We simply want to glorify Christ. We love him and we want sinners to be saved. So I think that's important.

And then the other thing too with open -air preaching is you're going to be dealing with the lost constantly.

I mean, that's what we're doing. We're going to the lost and we're preaching the gospel to them. And like in Acts 17, after Paul preached at Mars Hill, you saw there were three different responses.

Yes, some believe, some want to hear more, but then you have the mocking and the scorning.

And as you're out there and you're facing a lot of the mocking and the scorning and the people who are just walking by, not even giving you the time of day, your heart can slowly become hardened to the lost and you can lose some of that deep compassion that you once had.

And I think the antidote for that is to be in prayer and crying out for God to soften our hearts and to change us, to make us more like Christ so that our hearts really do ache for the state of this world and the many people who are on that broad path that leads to destruction.

And there's other things too, like having the right amplification, not preaching where the wind is coming at your face and no one can really hear you.

You want to preach with the wind at your back. You want to find good architecture around you so you can have some good acoustics, especially if you're preaching just with your vocals and not using amplification, so things like that.

And it would be really helpful to find a mentor, someone who has been open air preaching, because I don't know where I would be right now if it wasn't for some of these other faithful brothers who are able to model what good open air preaching looks like.

It's not yelling at people like these shock and awe guys do. No, it's speaking the truth in love, marrying grace and truth every time we go out there.

Now, you already mentioned about preaching with the wind to your back and so on.

Is there any other counsel that you have regarding where you do open air evangelism?

I mean, obviously, you want to do it in a place where there are normally people either passing through or gathered there, but other than legal restrictions, are there any places that you would counsel not to do this?

Or is anywhere fair game for you, as long as, as I said, it's legal? And in what circumstances would it be illegal?

Yeah, so you definitely don't want to be on private property because they can kick you right off.

You want to make sure you're on a public sidewalk public grounds of some sort.

So usually you're going to be fine if you do find a sidewalk in a city or if you're preaching at a fair or festival, there's going to be public grounds around there, sporting events as well, concerts too.

I would say that it's probably not as wise to preach in the open air when there's only a few people out there.

You don't want to just be preaching to three or four people who are sitting there. No, you can easily just go up and pass them tracks and engage them in a one -on -one conversation.

So I'm usually open air preaching where I find a larger amount of lost souls so that I can get them all the gospel, where I can't have a conversation with everyone.

I can't get a gospel track to everyone. And we're bringing the gospel to people that would not walk into a church possibly.

And they may not even engage me in a conversation or take a track.

So where we have large amounts of souls gathering, that's where we want to go preach. And I'll say this, college campuses are wonderful places to preach the gospel.

Now we have private college campuses and you have public college campuses. Private ones, you cannot go on their grounds, but you can oftentimes find sidewalks and areas to engage the students by open air preaching, passing out tracks, and engaging them in one -on -one conversations.

And then public colleges are usually very easy to get onto.

What I recommend is just going to the student union building and starting to preach there, setting up shop where all the students are walking by or out, eating lunch and start preaching.

And if they have restrictions, you're going to know about it pretty fast because someone's going to tell some of the campus security guards.

And then all you have to do from there is fill out whatever form they need you to fill out.

But I'm telling you, these college campuses, you have so many students who are lost.

They're being indoctrinated by all these secular ideologies. And oftentimes you run into the best conversations with these students.

And open air preaching, I always say, leads to conversations. Open air preaching is like a thunderbolt and it draws attention and people are like, what's going on over there?

They're listening. And then those you have with you can easily get in the conversations with the students who are looking at the preacher, like, what's this guy up to?

It makes getting in conversations very easy for people, especially those who have never really evangelized much.

And abortion mills too. We need to be out in front of abortion mills, pleading with mothers to not murder their babies and to bring them the good news of Jesus Christ so that they can be set free from their sins.

Okay. We have Deshawn in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. H -A -M -T -R -A -M -C -K, Hamtramck, Michigan.

It's probably pronounced nothing like that, even though it's spelled that way. Deshawn says, you mentioned earlier in a critical fashion about yelling at people.

But is it not very proper, if not even necessary, to raise your voice when doing open air preaching and even bring up some of the sacred cows of society like homosexuality and abortion in order to reveal to the crowds that these things are an abomination to God?

Well, you already just mentioned abortion mills. Obviously, you believe in denouncing that as a part of an open air effort.

But if you could respond to Deshawn. Yeah, absolutely.

I do think we should be calling out the sacred cows of our culture, homosexuality, abortion.

And we are lifting up our voices, absolutely. Now, when you have amplification, it's helpful because it doesn't really sound like you are yelling at people.

And I often start off when I am open air preaching without amplification. I'll tell them the reason

I'm lifting up my voice is not because I'm angry at you. It's because I want everyone to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So yes, we do want to lift up our voices, but we don't want to sound like we're yelling at people in an angry fashion that we want them to hear the love and compassion in our voices, even as we are preaching, heralding the good news.

You could raise your voice without it sounding like you're yelling at someone.

You could raise your voice and it could be very evident that your heart is broken for the souls of the hearers that you are crying out with love as a motivation, even though you're loud.

Amen. Exactly. And well, thank you,

Deshawn. By the way, I want to mention to our listeners, if you are a first time questioner, because most of our listeners today,

I don't recognize their names. If you are a first time questioner, we have a policy here that you will win a free

New American Standard Bible simply by being a first time questioner. And so let us know if you are indeed in that category and email me your full mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com

can mail you a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

NASB and also compliments of CVBBS .com, who picks up the postage fee for us.

And so please let us know. As far as things that, is there ever a time where a certain subject that may be a very legitimate subject to bring up as a topic of open air preaching may be something that you shelve for another time or is any subject that the scriptures either declare as truth or condemn as a damning teaching, as anything game when you're doing open air evangelism at all times?

Yeah, I would say you have to use wisdom because obviously we wanna preach the whole counsel of God.

There are times that I may avoid certain subjects until someone brings them up.

Then of course, I'm going to address them because you might have some folks just automatically run away from you.

Like on college campuses, it's interesting because you have so many of those semi -Pelagian shock and awe guys who come to those campuses and they haunt these campuses.

And when you step on a public college campus, they're expecting you to be just like them.

And I'll often have the students come up to me and say, well, are you against homosexuality?

And I'll say, of course I am. Here is what the scriptures say. And then I'll be able to reason with them from the word of God so that they see what the truth is.

So I might not address, say homosexuality right off the bat, but usually it does come up on a college campus.

Most of the time you're gonna have students coming over right when they start to hear the word of God preached.

Because ultimately I want people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not simply them just not being a homosexual anymore.

It's them repenting of their sins, placing their faith in Christ and being made a new creation in Christ.

And then God is going to clean house in their life and kick out all of those sins downstream.

But we're definitely not being cowards and hiding certain things. I just think you need to use wisdom in certain situations, like at a gay pride parade.

I mean, they know right away that you're against homosexuality. And sometimes I'll just stand up there, go first Timothy 1, 15, and just start preaching the gospel right there to them because they're all against you automatically.

And they know you're there because they know that they are in sin.

We have Colleen in Ives Estates, Florida, and that may be pronounced

Eves, but it's I -V -E -S. I'm assuming it's Ives Estates, Florida. And Colleen said, you mentioned earlier about doing open air evangelism at concerts and at sporting events.

I'm assuming you mean in the parking lot before people actually enter into the event or while they are leaving or on breaks, because wouldn't it be counterproductive to intrude upon the event that people have paid for to enjoy with the understanding that you are preaching the gospel, but nonetheless you may anger people and bring more offense than the gospel intends.

Yeah, absolutely. It's when the people are walking into the event or they are leaving.

We'd just be preaching on a sidewalk somewhere. We definitely don't want to offend people because the gospel is already offensive.

We don't wanna add to that offense. We wanna be wise. We wanna be respectful. So for example, like if I'm downtown and I see that there's a restaurant nearby and people are just sitting outside on a warm summer day, enjoying their food,

I'm probably not gonna go 20 yards away from them and start preaching as they're trying to enjoy their meal.

I'm gonna go somewhere else where there's people just passing by. So I do think we need to be wise with where we are preaching the gospel.

Amen. And now let's get into a little bit about the differences between an open air evangelism endeavor and when perhaps you are winding down and a person or handful of people say, excuse me, can

I talk to you for a minute or a few minutes about certain things that are running through my mind, burdening my heart?

Obviously, there's gonna be a difference to a degree, not in the message, but in the manner when you are speaking to a large group of people that would include people who are maybe standing there just wanting to be entertained or waiting to mock you in any occasion they can or watch other people mock you.

And then you have those people whose hearts are being pricked, those people who are being drawn by the Holy Spirit to inquire more deeply.

Tell us about some of the differences that would be in place between those two different scenarios.

Yeah, so when we're preaching to a large group, it's gonna be pretty intense because you wanna keep people's attention.

You don't wanna just be standing there talking because no one's really going to listen to you.

You wanna have zeal and passion and there's gonna be unction and you're gonna be lifting up your voice, obviously showing that you are compassionate and caring for their souls.

But it's different when you have someone approach you. So when I have one person, two, three people come up to me after I'm done preaching and I'm still on the box and they wanna talk more, they have questions, my tone is gonna change and it's gonna be way more conversational.

And I'm just engaging them, I'm fielding their questions, not compromising on the truth, but the way

I sound is gonna be different because I'm no longer preaching in the open air,

I'm just engaging someone in a one -on -one conversation. And oftentimes those conversations after the preaching are wonderful because like you said,

Chris, their hearts have been pricked by the Holy Spirit as they're walking by hearing the preaching of the word.

Yes, and let's see here, we have Du Bois in Sourland, Alabama.

And Du Bois says, you were announcing in the beginning of the interview some tips on how to break into a conversation with a lost person when you want to bring them the gospel.

This would obviously be the part of your evangelistic efforts that are to one individual or a small group.

Are there any ideas that you have to share with us about breaking into a conversation to get people who might not otherwise be interested into giving you a listening ear?

I love that question. I have found gospel tracks to be one of the best ways for me to get into conversations with people, simply walking up to folks saying, hey, how are you doing?

Did you get a gospel track today? It's a gospel to Jesus Christ. And watching how they react to that.

Do they seem like they wanna talk more or are they just gonna put it in their pocket and walk away? And if they seem like they wanna talk more, maybe they look down and start reading it.

Then I'll ask a lead in question, something like, hey, do you have a Christian background? Or have you been in church before?

Could I ask you this? Do you think people who are good go to heaven?

Are you good enough to go to heaven? What do you think happens after someone dies? Do you believe in God's existence?

Things like that. And that immediately will get you into a conversation with someone.

And if you don't use gospel tracks, it's totally fine. You can just be in a conversation with someone. You're talking and you wanna have a transition question where you can go from speaking about the natural, like weather, sports, work, whatever it may be, to speaking about Christ.

And again, you can use those same questions. Just be like, hey man, do you know of any good churches around here?

Do you have that Christian background? I'm a Christian. What do you think happens after someone dies?

Things like that. And then seeing how they respond. And if they wanna keep going with the conversation, then keep going.

And be praying that God opens doors. It's just amazing. When you're praying for God to open these doors,

I mean, he just will bring you conversation after conversation. It's amazing.

Wherever you're at, just walking into a store, Lord, I wanna share the gospel. Open a door for me.

Prepare someone's heart to hear the good news and use me, give me boldness. And we're going to our final break right now.

If anybody else has a question they wanna ask, please send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

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We are now back with our guest today, Ryan Hartzell, and we have been discussing a theme involving open -air evangelism.

And how do you overcome the temptation to be overly polite and kind when you are in the midst of a conversation with somebody who is involved in egregious sin and you're at the one hand, you don't want them to shut you out, walk away, run away.

But at the same time, you want to be uncompromising in regard to the truth because it's not an act of love to candy coat the truth and to avoid the message of repentance and so on.

So tell us about how you overcome that temptation to perhaps soften the message to somebody.

Yeah, we absolutely never want to soften any of God's word. So it really comes down to marrying truth and love and speaking in such a way where people can hear the compassion in our voices, but calling them to repent and believe the gospel, calling out specific sins, especially the pet sins that our culture has.

And I think fighting that temptation comes down to being in prayer, asking

God to give you a boldness, but also to speak with grace and truth.

And that's something that we cannot do in and of ourselves. I know I've never done that perfectly.

I think everyone will either fall to one side or the other.

Some will fall towards being too soft and others will fall to maybe being harsh in the way they say it.

We want to be right there in the middle where we're uncompromising, where we have a spine of steel, but our hearts are soft for that person that is standing in front of us, that eternal soul that's going to spend an eternity in heaven or in hell.

And the only way that they're going to enter into the kingdom of God is if they repent of their sins and place their faith in Christ.

And we know that people are going to rebel against us. They're going to mock and scorn.

That's what we see throughout the Bible. So we need to also have thick skin when that does come and not say, well, maybe

I said that too harshly because people are going to come up against the word of God and hate what they hear because if they're outside of Christ, the

Bible makes it clear that they're haters of God and they must be born again.

God must take out that heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, but we have to endure all things for the sake of the elect.

And in order to make that message of repentance something that the sinner receives, don't we always have to include the fact that we, the messengers, are sinners as well?

Absolutely. I always like to make that clear to my listeners. I'm like, again, one beggar telling another beggar where the bread is at.

I'm a wretched sinner saved by the grace of God. I am no better than you. We all meet at an equal playing field at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ.

We're all sinners in need of Christ. And I'm pointing you to him because I love you and I care for you. Well, you're going to have to be quick with answering this question because we're almost out of time.

But Tracy in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, wants to know if you could give any praise reports as far as the fruits of your efforts are concerned.

Yeah, absolutely. I can't say I've seen someone converted yet.

I mean, I've had some what the Puritans would call hopeful converts where they were really receptive to what

I said. And now they're in churches. I would say this is actually not from open air preaching.

It's from someone I met in a giant food store and got to share the gospel with her.

And then a month later, I saw her again and she said she's reading her

Bible. She's going to a solid reform church in New Bloomfield and she's meeting with the pastor.

So I don't know if she's converted, but it really seems like she might be.

Again, I can't see the heart. But so many people coming up to me after I've preached saying that they listened to the whole message and we've had many conversations against salvations of the

Lord. We just plant seeds, water seeds, and God brings the increase. And I'm assuming you're talking about Trinity Christian Church of New Bloomfield.

Exactly. Where Pastor Ed Boyle is the pastor. Yes, sir. Well, well, we are out of time.

If a listener wants to get a hold of you, how would they do that? So you can find me on Instagram.

It's ryan .hartzell, R -Y -A -N dot H -A -R -T -Z -E -L.

I'm also on Facebook and Twitter and you can direct message me there and follow each other.

I'd love to talk more. Well, fantastic. And I loved every minute of our conversation today,

Ryan. I look forward to having you back on the show. And I also look forward to our next time, an opportunity for fellowship with one another.

And I want to remind our listeners something that I remind our listeners of every day at the conclusion of my program.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater savior than you are a sinner.