Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! This is the first part of a three part series. I was not planning on doing a series, but there was so much information to share that there was no choice. Without further ado...
In the past week, the Lord has opened my eyes to something that was right in front of me, but I always seemed to overlook the full truth of this matter. This Godly eureka moment began striking last Sunday... at "Christianity's Biggest Music Concert Tour" ...Winter Jam. WARNING: What you are about to read may offend you if you think there is nothing wrong with the "Christian Church" in America. Please continue to read, however, because this will serve as your fair warning message.
Winter Jam was selected as our outreach target for January for three reasons. 1. Many people bring unsaved loved ones so that they will hear the "gospel" message at the event. 2. Many "Christians" that attend these events are actually false converts. (See Mark 4:1-20) 3. We wanted to get a book into the hands of the entertainers that shares some Biblical truth about God's plan.
We started by giving out Gospel tracts at one of the entrances to those standing in line. A few turned us down because they thought we were with some vegetarian lady that was handing out unbiblical material in the same area. I started saying, "We're not affiliated with the meat lady," and people grabbed the tracts eagerly. We ran out of our tracts, over 700 total, after about 20 minutes and were glad to get into the warm arena. Once inside, we began looking for seating and heard the announcement for pastors to meet Tony Nolan at a certain area. JoAnna and I went up to hear a few words from Tony and a few of the artists... with books in, well, pockets.
After what seemed like an hour-long infomercial about child sponsorship, they sent the group back to their seats. This was our chance and JoAnna found an easy way to get over to Tony. I walked up to Tony, introduced myself, asked if he would give out a book to each band/artist (and himself) for reading, and asked if I could pray for him. The plan was to pray that his message that night would be Biblical, but God had a different idea and I prayed that Tony would be humbled, so that God could be exalted. When I finished, Tony thanked me and said that the crew had just been talking about John 3:30 earlier that day. To be honest, when the prayer started coming out about Tony getting humble... I was expecting a fat lip, not a thank you! Thank you Jesus!
We found seats behind the stage, which are great when you don't come for the performers--but for the worship of our Lord. When it came time for Tony to share the Gospel, I was excited. He talked about reading a lot from the Bible, but then he read one verse... and closed the Bible. What a let down! That verse said, "The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life" (John 10:10). Tony's message lasted a maximum of 5 minutes, before moving into "I can pray for you, I'll pray for you, Wanna go to Heaven? Let me pray" for 5 minutes, followed by a 5 minute recap of his testimony that he shared in the pastors' meeting earlier that night. On a personal note, I like Tony Nolan and think he's a nice guy, but his Gospel message needs work. I sincerely hope he reads the book we gave him.
The concert went fairly well, a few secular songs sooomehow showed up in a "Christian" concert, but nothing else major happened...
Read Part Two (Satanic Sickness)
Read Part Three (Get Ready)
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