Youth Evangelism
Earlier in August, Hearts for the Lost had the wonderful opportunity to go and share the gospel with the youth of New Covenant Fellowship Church in Burkeville, Virginia. Our own Scotty Logue had been conducting evangelism training over the previous few weeks. The culmination of this youth training was an evangelism outing in downtown Richmond, Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The entire team consisted of 21 individuals 3 of which were the adult leaders myself (Greg), Adam West, and of course Scotty. One of the older youth members volunteered to be the 4th team leader. This was move-in day for the freshman at the University. Many young students with their parents lined up on the sidewalks eager to move into their new dormitories. While across the street were set up many carnival like venues. We organized into teams, set our time limits, prayerfully considered our mission, and struck out into the harvest field.
My team consisted of 4 members me the “Leader” and three of the other youths. I was rather amazed that we were in the heart of Virginia and supposedly in the midst of the Bible belt but we had some 4 or 5 interviews before we encountered anyone who would admit to a Christian Background. The youth encouraged me greatly with their enthusiasm to share with other youth. Our first two encounters were with Anthropology students. Wow, how easy it is to get them to talk about religion and faith. Much to our dismay they were both very universally minded, but the law is the law and we cannot have a society without it and none have kept it completely. It was wonderful to see just how they began to understand the role that justice plays within human development and how only the Gospel satisfies that justice. The youth began handing out many tracts and engaging others in Gospel discussions. I was often times running from area to area as if I could somehow help or assist these new evangelistic laborers. I began to feel sort of lukewarm by comparison.
Finally we encountered two twin ladies who, when asked why they would go to heaven, responded with “because we just returned from a mission trip in central America.” Here is where the courtroom scenario really paints a clear picture for the failure of our works based ideas of salvation. Someone said that we even as Christians tend to push a wheel burrow of good works out in front of ourselves even when we understand clearly the Gospel of Grace.
The day was long and ended at the Bistro for lunch. I could not help but to invite myself to the table where two delightfully friendly Mormon missionaries were seated. I began with the 3 minutes to live approach. To which they replied with the Mormon concept of soul imprisonment after death. I then made a comparison of what the “orthodox” Christians were teaching and what they had just expounded, and how different these two concepts of the work of Christ were. We searched scripture for a short while and I was amazed how deeply engrained the Gospel was within its passages. Everywhere we ran into Grace.
Our trip began actually on Friday night at a youth roundup at a local retreat ranch. Here I was delighted to learn how to lose at a corn hole tournament but vindicated myself in the tug of war where I soundly defeated two little girls and a 6th grader.
Saturday was the evangelism outing and Sunday was men’s breakfast followed by Sunday school and capped off with worship at the Church.
Let’s do it again soon.
Greg