Battle Log

Friday 22 August 2008

Posted 28 August 2008, 7:37 PM by Rob Hughes. Permalink

On Friday night the team met up once more at Leicester Square for another night of ministry. Carl, Philip, Andrew Noble, my brother James, Andrew and I came together in prayer and looked forward to an evening of ministry. Leicester Square was full to the brim with people, just the way we like it!

After setting up our table with gospel tracts and free Bible I stood up to preach. It wasn't long before we brought in a crowd. Carl had a number of laminated cards that he had made up, that showed things like the scientific facts we see in the Bible, the Ten Commandments, fulfilled prophecies, etc. He stood next to me whilst I preached so that I could use them during my message. As I continued to preach the crowd got larger and before long I was being heckled by a number of Muslim men. I refuted their arguments and answered their question; unfortunately they were not best pleased and became quite aggressive. Carl could tell that they were starting to make approaches towards me and so tried to keep a perimeter in front of them and me. This was not working and I was actually more concerned for Carl than I was for myself! Being elevated serves two purposes. It causes people to stop and listen and it is also offers a form of protection.

I had preached for less than twenty minutes when I stepped down. It was frustrating but we were getting nowhere fast. There were people in the crowd who wanted to listen but our Muslim hecklers were not interested in listening at all. It is worth noting how aggressive Muslims can get, and I believe this is due largely to the fact that Islam is a religion steeped in militant teaching. Not all Muslim people that I speak to are this way mind you. Before I had stepped down, Christians from a ministry called "John 3:7" had arrived. One Christian gentleman in particular was very supportive of my preaching and when I stepped down began engaging with many of the Muslims. I also discovered later from the team that a man from the crowd, who was not a Christian, had been prepared to come to my defence, had things turned south. Praise the Lord!

As soon as I was down I made my way over to a young couple who I noticed had been listening to my message. I got talking with Mark and his girlfriend Danielle and we spoke for about an hour. We covered much as they had many questions. One particular question they asked was centred on knowing which religion was the right one. This allowed me to comprehensively share the whole counsel of God with them so that they could see that there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). They took a Bible to share and some tracts and we also exchanged contact details. I have since written them an email and so do pray that they would write back so that we can continue where we left off.

We left about 11:30pm, which is more or less the time we need to leave as we have to catch the tube home. It had been a somewhat frustrating evening, however many tracts had gone out and I was particularly grateful to the Lord for the conversation I'd had with Mark and Danielle. Do pray for them. After talking it through we have decided to cut back our ministry on the Saturday at Tooting Broadway to once every two weeks. This is simply down to the practicalities of life I'm afraid. As it happened I was contacted about a week ago by a man named Michael who attends a Calvary Chapel church in London. Every year his church does an outreach at the Notting Hill Carnival. The carnival involves marches and parades and so forth. There is always loud music and much food and drink. There is also a great deal of lasciviousness that goes on and so I have avoided it for obvious reasons. However, there are simply thousands and thousands of people who attend and so there is no better place to go if you're looking for people to witness to. My only gripe is that the music is incredibly loud and so it can be somewhat of an obstacle when talking to someone. I had been contacted after Michael had seen my blog. He wanted to know whether my team and I could attend their outreach to give a helping hand. Of course I was quite willing to do so, and so Carl, my brother James and I headed up there Saturday afternoon. The area they use is the same each year and has come to be known as "The God Corner." During our time there we spoke with as many people as we could. The music was quite deafening so we did our best! Michael and those from his church were handing out tracts and talking with people as well. In addition his church had set up a stage and where they had performers who rapped and sang Christian songs. It was certainly different to what I am used to.

I was asked to come up on stage to deliver a gospel message, and so I preached a solid gospel message for about twenty minutes or so. I did not offer an alter call but urged those who did not know the Lord to come to Him in repentance and faith. Please pray that the seed fell on good soil. So in the end a packed weekend of ministry. Praise the Lord that we are privileged to serve Him by sharing the gospel with others.

Soli Deo Gloria!

View previous London report (15 August 2008)