I was very privileged to be brought up in a home where the Lord Jesus was loved and the Word of God was valued. I can remember from my earliest days having many visitors in our home. Some of them were Bible teachers and others were preachers of the gospel as well as being personal family friends. Out of this group six stand out in my mind: they are Robert Walker of Aberdeen, Jim Smith of Livingston, Jack Hay and John Campbell of Perthshire, Robert Revie of Tarbolton, and Peter Brandon of Bedford. In different ways each of them impressed on me their deep passion for the souls of men and women and a great desire to be holy in their lifestyle. As a result I found an increasing interest in telling people about the Lord Jesus and a constant awareness of the need to walk more closely with the Lord.
In my late teens and twenties my wish was to spend my life telling out the gospel, but this was not to be the path that God took me down initially. After marrying Carole and spending 29 years in business the Lord called me to spend my time spreading the "good news". The fact that it had not happened earlier in life may be down to my dullness of hearing,
In 2006 I left my business interests behind and we both concentrated our energy on spreading the gospel. At this stage we were living in the city of Manchester. My first thoughts on commencing this new service for God were, "Where do you start when you want to tell people the good news of God’s salvation?". The following are methods employed now.
Street Meetings (Open Airs)
Street meetings in Liverpool City Centre take place on Tuesdays, Fridays and once a month on Saturday morning. People sit and listen, and on average we have between twenty and thirty people within the sound of our voice. This is a great opportunity to preach the gospel before an audience who need it the most. Hardly a week passes without out having a good in-depth conversation with more than one individual.
Community Hall Outreach
We started this work in January, 2010. Our thinking was to work in three different community halls - Deysbrook Village Hall, Stockbridge Village Hall and Newsham Park Community Room. A number of unsaved people were reached and spoken to at these meetings. An unexpected aspect of this work however was the opportunity to reach Christians in the area. Two of the community hall meetings continue, one on a Wednesday evening and the other late on a Thursday afternoon. Presently we are covering basic Bible truths. In one of the meetings the teaching is about the life of a believer and the truth of the local church. The other meeting has just started to look at some of the basic truths of Scripture about God, man, and sin. We are praying that, although these meetings were initially arranged to reach out with the gospel, the development of character in the believers who are coming will result in them being more effective in spreading the gospel.
Opportunities in the Business Community
It was a burden of mine to continue to reach people who may not normally go to a place where they will hear the gospel. Having developed a considerable number of contacts in the business community I thought that it was important to keep in touch so that I could share the gospel with them. To do this I continued to attend a monthly business function. At this event I was able to display Christian booklets on a table, put up a marketing banner with John 3.16 on it and display my contact details. During the event I was allowed to chat to people about "my business"– the gospel. We have been so thrilled to know of at least one lady who has been saved as result of this work.
Local Assembly Based Work
We seek to focus much of our attention on local gospel endeavour. This can be hard graft, but as far as I can see it is the only way to build a long-term work for the Lord.
Visiting homes in the community (traditionally known as "door to door work") is an essential. In previous generations folks knew more people in their locality and so probably did not need to work so much to make the initial contacts. (I am sure that they tried as hard if not harder to maintain a good testimony with these people.) We have been encouraged in this work to see some new people coming along including a Pakistani family who attend regularly.
Moving among families is a good way of making long-term contacts. While we do not have the manpower to run regular children’s meetings (I go into local schools and on average speak to a couple of hundred children a week which we would never achieve in a Sunday School or children’s meeting set up), we have developed a weekly parent & toddlers group. A short gospel message is given each week and the parents now listen well. Bible stories for children are also given. On the back of this we have started a get-together in our home once a month for these contacts. Many people in the area come from a particular religious background, which means that they feel uncomfortable coming to a meeting in the hall. They will thankfully come to our home to hear
the gospel.
Gospel meetings are held in the Gospel Hall on Sunday evenings with a good number of unsaved people coming in. Once a month we have a community gospel tea where we can have over twenty unsaved present and we usually have a focused period of gospel outreach meetings once a year in the hall. This year we are going to have the Bromborough Bible Exhibition in the hall for a week. We are praying that as schools and individuals are invited to come along and see the exhibition we will have the opportunity to present the gospel to them.
I have intentionally not included the names of individuals in this report for the sake of confidentiality. If you would like details for the purposes of assembly and individual pray please contact the writer on stepcar61@gmail.com.
Concluded.
