One cold November night I joined a group from another college to do some street ministry in my city. We went down to the corner of Eastern and Franklin. A spot filled with bass blasting traffic throughout the night and an area known for shootings. It was only a few days before that someone was murdered a block away from our location. I was a bit nervous but excited to see what God might do.
We set up a small folding table and put out donuts, muffins, coffee, and Bibles. Passerbys’ immediately noticed us, as it is very unusual to see a group of light skinned people crowded around a table on street corner late at night in a not so white neighborhood. We got a lot of looks of curiosity. Some people when stopped at the traffic light would yell out their window, “What are you guys doing?” or “What are you selling?” We would just yell back, “We are giving out free donuts, coffee, and Bibles.” At first I cringed when people from my group said “Bibles”. For some reason I thought for sure that was the last thing you would want to yell back. I felt kind of embarrassed and fearful of being mocked for being a Christian. But to my very surprise it was the Bibles that captivated our mobile audience. It was pretty common to hear, “Bibles!? Hold on, I am pulling over.” People would literally stop going where they were headed and pull over to get a Bible and talk with us. I was astounded. And also interesting, most people ignored our hot coffee and warm donuts on that cold night when they came to get a Bible. They weren’t interested in physical food but only spiritual.
God taught me a lot that night about people’s inner craving to be feed the bread of Truth and my own fear of declaring the Gospel. My approach would have been to coax people in with tasty beverages and food and give them a side of Gospel between bites of donuts without their knowing. Now in hindsight my cowardly approach to proclaiming the greatest news on earth seems shameful. God calls us to share the Gospel with love and boldness not with craft and cowardliness.
