St Patrick's Day Parade

(Photo by Beverly Young-Kniegge - Thanks Bev)


The weather could have hardly been nicer for the parade this year. The crowds of people were much greater than what I had imagined. Caleb and Christine were stationed on the corner in front of the Remington building handing out St Patrick's Day Millions to the people passing by. Many had brought cookies and other refreshments that were being given away as part of Living Stones yearly parade outreach. We had about 400 of the new Lincoln Trillions plus 100 new optical illusion tracts with us. The team ended up giving away all the Trillions as well as about 200 of the St Patrick's Millions. We could have given away many more. We had a number of good conversations as well. I talked to people from a variety of backgrounds including Lutheran(Chuck), Mormon, Jehovah's Witness (Ted), and Catholic(Scott and Beth). Tracy had a very long conversation with a lady who had endured much hurt at the hands of professing Christian leaders. Please pray for her be able to find a solidly biblical church to join. I met a family (Scott and Beth) that converted to the Roman Catholic Church about three years ago. We had an interesting talk and exchanged contact information so we could get together at a later time. We were received graciously by just about everyone. One young man who I had talked to last fall gave me an emphatic "No I do not" when I asked him if he wanted a Lincoln Trillion. When we met him in the fall he identified himself as Christian but let us know that he did not think that we should be doing the kind of overt evangelism that we were doing. Rather he said we should be doing something to serve people like driving drunk people home. I told him at the time that we agree that serving people is important but that we should also be about the business of actually confronting people with the truth about sin, righteousness and judgment. He replied "Confront away!" and stormed off without looking back. (This was at the end of a fairly lengthy discussion on the subject that started with us asking him how he would evangelize someone who wasn't a Christian.) He is like many who seem to have such a man-centered view of the Gospel that they think that relationship building must always precede any attempt to evangelize someone lest we "push people away from God". We do think that as the Apostle said, "the servant of the Lord must be gentle to everyone in meekness instructing those who oppose themselves." But we should not ignore the many opportunities that present themselves to us on a daily basis because some nebulous level of relationship has not been achieved. We did not have a prior relationship with almost any of the 600+ people who received the Gospel in written form at the parade, but we do hope to have a future relationship with them. Perhaps for some of them reading a good solid Gospel tract will be a step in their lives towards coming to faith in Christ alone. We are praying that God will do what only He can do in their lives. And by His grace we hope to be part of a growing movement of believers that will continue to make Christ known as we passionately love Him together. Soli Deo gloria.