156: But does Street Preaching "work"?

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Interviewing Cody Torres About Street Preaching and Evangelism

Man, we've been seeing a lot of each other over these last few weeks, huh?

Never, we haven't even changed clothes. We haven't even changed clothes. Once again, the infamous Cody Torres, with us on the Little Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. Thanks for joining us on this episode.

This is the third in a three-part series where we have been interviewing Cody about street preaching and evangelism. And man, it's been great. I hope people are as encouraged by this as I have been, edified.

And so if you haven't listened to those two, then you need to listen to the previous, or sorry, yeah, listen to the previous two, then listen to this one, kind of a concluding. We're gonna land the plane here and make some points I think are important.

But yeah, I forget if I, yeah, I'm Alan Nelson, pastor, Providence Baptist Church, one of the pastors. Cody Torres, by the word, Baptist Church. We left off last time, you had left the stockyards under the counsel of your pastor, Brother Randall Easter.

And so for the last year and a half, explain to me what your, before we get to the fruit, explain to me what your evangelism has looked like more in the last year and a half. Before we get to the fruit, okay.

Friendship Evangelism, Urgency, and Living in the Community

So I wanted to, Pastor Randall's life kind of encouraged me in this, because Pastor Randall, he lives evangelism, right? And he pours himself into specific people. The people in his context know who he is.

And so that encouraged me. It's like, it's one thing to go somewhere and to preach. And I'm not saying that's wrong to go random places and preach. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying it's one thing to go somewhere and preach and then leave, and there's no relationship or connections made with people, right?

Think I lost you. I'm hearing you, but you're just frozen on the screen. Okay, there we are.

Okay, you got me now? What was the last thing you heard?

Well, you said there's one thing to go preach somewhere and that's not wrong. We can go preach anywhere. I can go preach in Little Rock. It's not wrong to do that. That's one thing. But then where you have relationships, connections with people.

Yeah, so what I was encouraged by Pastor Randall's life was people always wanna talk about friendship evangelism, right? And you need to make friendships with people. You need to make relationships with people so that eventually you can get to the gospel, which is not biblical.

The Bible says, if I can just make two verses on that, the Bible says, today is the day of salvation. Now is the appointed time. If you're gonna be obedient to scripture and how it addresses souls, how can you have a method that says tomorrow?

James says, our life is a mist and a vapor, here and gone, like we're not guaranteed another day. And that if you think you have days to come, that you're a fool. So again, how can you have a method that says maybe in the future days that you're not guaranteed?

Right. And so true friendship evangelism, if you wanna use the terminology, would be to find people in your context, right? Whether it's a neighbor, whether it's that gas station you always stop at, whether it's the barbershop you always go to.

I have a barbershop I go to, and all of the ladies in that barbershop know about my life, know about my ministry. They know about what I do. They watch our videos. When I go get a haircut in there, I'm able to sit in the chair and just preach the gospel.

I usually try and preach a text of scripture and talk to them about it. I talk loud about controversial things because there's all kinds of people in there. So far, no one has tried to jump on me for that yet, but most people are just quiet.

But I have that ministry there at a barbershop. So in your own local context, find those common places you go to and get to know the people starting with the gospel and use whatever days God gives you and moments in the future that God gives you to continue to visit and revisit the gospel and their soul and unfold biblical truth and wisdom to them.

And that's biblical friendship evangelism. I wanted to do something like that.

I might flip that around and say better than friendship. Evangelism is evangelism friendship, where you wind up making friends because you're evangelizing. And they may not actually become a Christian at that moment, but they become your friend.

And your friendship is based on them knowing already where you stand. And you don't have to go break that to them later and be like, oh yeah, by the way, I'm a Christian. So anyway, so you wanted to bring the relational aspect and the preaching aspect together.

Yep.

Consistent Presence in the Community and Open-Air Preaching Fruit

And so in the community, my desire, my thought was I want people to know in the community who we are, where we are and when we are. And so I had to develop, okay, where are we gonna meet? Now we've changed it a little bit, but primarily it's Quick Trip, Walmart or Racetrack.

And people know that because we hit those spots hundreds of times, right?

I've seen this personally. So like when I was there Easter week this year, it was amazing to me at both Walmart and Quick Trip. I had different people come up to me and say to me, are you the guys that we see out preaching?

That was so amazing. Cause I'm like, well, first of all, it's not me. Cause this is my, well, not my first time with you guys. I mean, I've been several times, but you're not talking about me, but just the fact that they have seen your consistent presence in these places preaching the gospel.

So I've seen it firsthand.

Amen. Amen. Yeah, so that was my hope was to become a part of the community for the sake of making Christ known and to just to be that watchman on the tower who continues to blow the trumpet, right? And so that has happened.

People get on Facebook pages and they talk about us either good or bad. People know who we are. We've increased in our support and we've increased in the hatred of others. But it is to the point now where people know who we are.

And what's really cool now, and we've had over 50 people who have visited the church because of this in just a year and a half, a year to a year and a half. We've had easily over 50 different people who have visited the church just strictly because of open air preaching.

And there are some who are future possible members and we've had one, two, two or three families join the church because of open air preaching. And there's people in the Bible study, there'll be people in the Bible study tonight.

And I'm not trying to compare numbers, but I just do wanna throw that out there. Like God is blessing this. And like, I would put that 50 people visit church. How many families you say join? Two or three right now.

Two to three joining, people coming to Bible. Yeah, potentially four to five. Four to five joining, people coming to Bible studies. Like I would put this up against any other so-called method, and I love that God is blessing it.

And I've seen it firsthand and I'm encouraged by it firsthand. And it's like, what do you say to people who would say street preaching is just confrontational. It's just about you causing a ruckus and it doesn't work.

Like, what would you say?

You just don't know what you're talking about. You're not being faithful to the scriptures and or you've never done it. Or you've seen it bad.

You know, I'm willing to get that you've seen it bad, but give some faithful brothers a chance. Go ahead.

Responding to Critics and a Conversation Over Coffee

Yeah, I was just explaining this to someone last week who said their elder thinks that all street preachers are just arrogant jerks. And I told them, I said, well, I'm willing to grant, like you said, perhaps he's just seen some really bad examples.

I've seen bad examples. I've confronted bad examples. I've dealt with bad examples. I've probably been a bad example from time to time. But when it's done faithfully and it's done right, you cannot argue with that.

It is biblical. It is right. It is God's method. It is God's command. And it is what we are to do as the church. I was gonna say,.

And I won't say his name or anything, but you got, I think you lost me. You got me? I lost you, but I think you're back or maybe you're back. Okay.

So there was a guy in the community. I won't say his name, but he began to attack us on social media for a whole week. He would just relentless. And I mean saying horrible things. And this is a good story because it's really relevant to what you're talking about here.

And he attacked us for a whole week on social media saying horrible, awful things and professing to be a Christian. And I contended with him, but I never repaid evil with evil. I didn't mock him. I didn't do anything like that.

I ignored all the insults and continue to try and point him back to scripture. Well, sir, I know you're saying this, but the Bible says in this passage, A, B, and C. Well, sir, actually the Bible says, well, sir, actually the scripture say here, or sir, this is why.

And so I just explain and explain and give them scripture and scripture and scripture for a whole week. That next weekend was Halloween. And we set up on a street corner in a neighborhood in our community to preach.

And it just so happened to be his street. And he's on the HOA board. And I didn't know it in the moment. I didn't even connect the dots in the moment, but he comes up and he's yelling at me and telling me that we're on private property and we needed to move across the street, which I did.

And then the next day I realized, cause he got on Facebook attacking us again, that that was him. And he admitted that it was him. Well, here we go again for a whole nother week, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, mocking us, calling us cultists, saying all kinds of horrible things I won't repeat.

And so finally a brother named Joe Anderson, another good brother, faithful street preacher, he pitches this idea to me and says, how about you just invite him for coffee? And I was like, you know what?

Why not? I'm gonna try that. I didn't even think to try that because who in the world, what troll on Facebook would ever agree to actually meet in person, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That didn't even cross my mind because these people are generally never going to do that.

They don't care enough to do that. Yeah. But I thought, you know what? Why not? So I private messaged him and I said, hey, honest invite and we can meet on your terms. Would you like to get together sometime and have a cup of coffee and just be able to talk about this issue and I'd be able to kind of hear some of your objections and your problem with what we do?

And he responded and I told him, I said, honest, friendly invite. And he responded and said, actually, yeah, I would love to do that. Yeah. And I was shocked. I was like, really? And so anyways, we eventually ended up meeting in Hazel at a coffee shop and over a cup of coffee for two hours.

And we sat and we talked and I gave him the floor first and he went on and on and on and on about why it doesn't work. It's not in the results you intend to create. Ingers people, this method can't be right because it just upsets and agitates.

You got me? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I don't know if you lost me. He keeps telling me lost connection, but all right, I'm sorry, brother. I'm out here in the sticks in Cottondale. But they gave me all these reasons why it doesn't work.

And I gave him scripture and scripture. And through that face-to-face conversation, I was able to communicate to him and to show him the motive and why we do what we do. Because it is a genuine love for God and it is a genuine love for our neighbor.

I explained to him, I don't do this because I think I'm better than everybody. It's not from a position of self-righteousness. I said, look, I would agree with Paul that I'm the chief of sinners. And if God could save me, then I have the utmost confidence that God can save anybody in Azel.

And I explained to him why we do what we do. Biblically, I explained to him why we do what we do because of love and compassion. And I gave him all these answers. And at one point, he was starting to kind of, it seemed like the wheels were starting to turn.

And the objections he had as I answered them and explained our motives and what the Bible says, it was like pouring water on a fire, right? It was like, it was starting to kill the fire. And then he started to ask more questions from an honest like introspection or an honest investigation, whatever the word would be, right?

And so I answered and then he said, he kind of reverted back a little bit and goes, well, I just don't think it's creating opportunity for conversation. And as he began to tell me that it wasn't creating opportunity for conversation, I looked at him and I said his name.

And I said, because of my street preaching, you and I are sitting in a coffee shop right now having a cup of coffee with an open Bible talking about these issues. I think it's working. Amen.

The Fruit of Faithful Street Preaching in a Local Church

Yeah. That's one thing I was gonna say is like, this whole thing came about, this is a fruit of street preaching. This is not just going out and blasting people. It's not just going out and trying to ruin someone's day.

Like this is opening. And not only were you preaching, but then you pursued this man, you know? And this whole conversation is a fruit of you saying, and I'm not, you know, I'm not tooting your horn, brother.

You know, I'm willing to, I'll cut you down if I need to. But you know, what I'm saying is that you are being faithful and God used that faithfulness to make this connection with this man. Amen. Amen.

I lost you again, but I got you back. But I heard what you said.

Yeah. And those things can't happen. Those things don't happen like that unless you're a local church doing consistent evangelism in your own community, making those kinds of relationships. People have to know who you are, when you are and where you are.

Like without that, you don't, you're not able to pour into people in these types of ways. If you just go anywhere and everywhere and preach and leave, and that's the totality of your evangelism, these things cannot happen.

What Open-Air Preaching Looks Like on a Saturday

Yeah. Walk us through real quick a couple of things. One, I want to know about, so let's say you show, I already know this, but people need to know it. Let's say you show up at Quick Trip, the gas station with three guys.

Okay. Explain to me from start to finish what you're going to do there, how long it's going to be, what's happening.

Yeah. So you want me to just kind of tell you what we do on a Saturday? Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. So typically on a Saturday, every Saturday, 10 to two, we do the evangelism and we usually start by meeting at that coffee shop.

And we get a cup of coffee. We read the scriptures. I'll usually do like a small devotion. And then we pray about our day. We pray about evangelism. We prepare our hearts. And then we go out, we'll say Quick Trip, and we set up, or Walmart, wherever, set up a speaker, set up a box, set up all the equipment.

And usually till about two o 'clock. And sometimes depending, we might go a little bit longer, but we preach and there's signs. We ride on whiteboards. Brothers hold signs. People will stand in the driveways, not in the driveways, but next to the driveways, and have literature, church information, gospel tracts, things like that to pass out.

People come up and have questions. People will engage. We'll be able to pray for people. And so for several hours, there's just, we just rotate preachers. And as we rotate preachers, we rotate to signs or gospel tract distribution, praying with people, engaging with people.

And then when we're done, we pack up and leave. And that's what we do every single Saturday. What usually happens from time to time is there'll be engagement on Facebook because of what we did. Starts conversations, starts discussions, which there's a lot of negative in it, but the discussion's happening and there's the chance and the ability to address the issues and to address the misconceptions and to speak the truth and to speak the gospel.

And so it just opens up more conversation that wouldn't have happened.

If we were not out there doing that. And some people are there engaging you there. Sometimes there's negative. There's the heckler. We've seen the crazy. We've seen the almost violent. But we've also seen the encouragement, people coming up and encouraging you, people giving you money, and then just people coming up and just having dialogue.

And I think about that one biker with the kids. Did you ever see any more of him? Did he ever show up or anything? You remember he felt kind of convicted. Did you see him again?

So I'm sure you remember, but he came Friday night. Was it Friday night? Yeah, Friday night during Easter week. He came.

Or no, it was Sunday. He didn't come during Easter. Yeah, but I didn't see him during Easter week. Yeah, no, no, no.

So yeah, he came Sunday. He came Sunday morning, that next Sunday morning. Okay, wow. He came Sunday morning with his family. And I actually was talking to him yesterday.

He's one of the guys who will be here at Bible study tonight. That blows my mind. This is just a testimony to God's faithfulness. And it's because you guys are out there consistently preaching. And it's just amazing.

You know, and I just, in my heart, how could anybody be against this? I know we've seen it wrong. And I know that there are people that come across the wrong way. But it's like, this is beautiful and God is blessing it.

So how would you encourage, like, how would you encourage brothers? I'm not saying, we've already belabored the point and tried to show that this is biblical, but how would you encourage brothers in places that are listening to this?

Like, how should they start being more serious about evangelism in their area? And what all would that look like, including with open air preaching?

The Marketplace, the Gospel, and Reaching the Community

Yeah, I would say, like, you mentioned it earlier in Acts 17, 17, that he was going to the marketplaces every day with those who happened to be there. You've got to find the marketplace where there's people who happen to be there.

And so whatever your context is in your community, whether it's a park or a gas station or a Walmart, it's like, Paul was going to the marketplaces. Like, I've said this from time to time, but if you want to reach your community, find the local grocery store and preach.

Yeah, yeah. Everybody goes to the grocery store. Find a location, set aside a day and a time, and just be faithful. You may see stuff, you may not see anything. There's certainly dry seasons where you don't see anything, but if your motive is love for Christ, and you are understanding and trusting in what God has revealed, that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, and faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ, then you won't be discouraged.

And you'll be able, you'll be strengthened to press on and trust God. God will, not to mention, God puts us through testings. Maybe he'll test you with a dry season to see what your faithfulness is and to increase your faithfulness, and then he'll bless you with fruit.

But you just have to trust God. I mean, some of the prophets were sent, the weeping prophet, right? Sent to a people who would not repent. Ezekiel was sent to a hard-headed, stiff-necked, rebellious house who would not listen, but his love for God and his obedience to God was his driving factor.

But when you set aside a location a day at a time, you start to become, people start to become aware of you. They start to know who you are. Look, you can drive by some random street preacher and know nothing about him and chalk it up to some lunatic on the corner.

But when you're faithful to a specific place at a specific time, as people see you over and over and over and begin, maybe they heard a particular thing you said last week, now they heard a different thing you said this week, next week they hear more, they begin to develop an understanding of what you're preaching, what you believe, who you are as a person, your character, and they start to see the love of Christ in you and you become a witness to them.

And what's really cool is since we've been doing that, and that's kind of been what's happening in our community, is now we're starting to have more and more Christians or other people coming up to us who need counsel and prayer.

They've seen us dozens of times and they're going through some difficulty in their life and they just need some direction. And we're being able to counsel people, pray with people, encourage them and do ministry like that even.

Law and Gospel, Christ Exalted, and Faithfulness Over Method-Hopping

Yeah, I think, you know, I wanna mention this too, like in the proclamation, like you're preaching law and gospel, you know? You're not just preaching law, you know, God's gonna judge you, that's important, but you're not stopping there.

And you're not just preaching gospel in the sense of a false gospel of like, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. You're preaching that God is angry with the wicked, that you've violated the commandments of God, that God is going to judge you.

And you're like, oh, I get it. That's gonna make people uncomfortable. Well, hell is gonna be a lot more uncomfortable than a street preacher on the corner, right? So you're giving them, look, you've offended God, God hates sin, you've broken his law, judgment is coming, but listen to his mercy.

Look at what he has done in Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man has fulfilled all righteousness, suffered on the cross under the wrath of God for our sins, risen again in victory. Turn, repent, stop trusting.

And particularly in your context and mine, it's don't trust in, you know, this Bible Belt religion of I've said a prayer, but I go on and continue in my wickedness. It's look to Christ, trust him. And this is the, so what I'm saying is like, when you guys are out there, you're not just like, hey, let's preach on the difference between angels and demons.

Like, I'm not saying that's, let's preach on tithing or, you know, let's preach on theology. I'm not saying that all that can't at some point find its way in a message, but particularly you're focusing on law and gospel and pointing people to Christ.

Yeah, go ahead. Well, two things, let me go back real quick about being faithful in the community to do all of that. There was a time, and I think this is obviously God blessing and confirming that this is where he wants us to be and that this is right.

And I'm fully convinced that a local church's primary effort of evangelism should be their local community. Everything else can be secondary. And from there, then we go to missions and things like that.

If you're not faithfully communicating the gospel to your own community, what right do you have to go anywhere else or to any other country? It starts with our Jerusalem. It starts with our local context to faithfully communicate the gospel in our homes and in our communities, and then to the ends of the earth.

Now, what I was gonna say was, there was a time, you know, how long has it been now? A year, I guess. I was out there, and I started to get tempted because I was coming into Azel. One of the reasons I didn't come to Azel for several years was because of the difficulty of finding crowds of people.

In the Fort Worth stockyards, there's just a sea of people to preach to. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, obviously, let's go to where the fish are, right? And I think about in John chapter 21, verse six, I believe it is, with when Jesus is, after he's been risen and he's revealing himself to the disciples, and they're fishing, right?

And they're casting their nets, and they're not catching anything. And Jesus says, throw your net on the other side of the boat. And so they throw their net on the other side of the boat, and there's all these fish they can't even pull in, and then they realize that it's Jesus, and they run to him and all of this.

But in that story, I at least take away this reality, is that Christ always knows where to throw the net. He's sovereign. He knows where the fish are. We think, oh, hey, here's a huge crowd of people.

Let me, my own community is not all that great. There's something better than my community. Let me go throw my nets there. But it's not right. We need to be throwing our nets in our own community on the right side of the boat, where Christ has commanded us to be a city set on a hill and to be a light through the local church in a local area.

And I think, I know, I think, I know that God is confirming and blessing that by the fruit that we're starting to see, that this is where we should have been. I thought, big crowds, let's go there. Azle, not so good, because where am I gonna preach?

Walmart and racetrack? Like, where can I find crowds of people? But it has been so fruitful the last year and a half. I feel like I've seen, I've at least seen more fruit in the last year and a half than I think I have in seven years.

Yeah, and I don't know, you know, I don't know these people who are listening to your specific community, but I do know that Christ is worthy to be proclaimed in that community. And go knock on a door, like, like start there.

You know what? Hey, next Saturday or this coming Saturday, we're just gonna go knock on a door. Well, what do I say? You begin with saying, hey, I'm so-and-so, you know, here's what we say. We knock on doors, and we found fruit from that.

So we say, hey, we're from Providence Baptist Church. We have a conviction in our heart that we want everyone in our community to know the gospel. So we're here to share the gospel. Amen, amen. Something like that.

It's not all that, you know, Lifeway didn't write it, but it's just genuine, and it's what we're trying to do. And I would also encourage, like, so I'm from a small town. We've got 1 ,300 people, and you've been here with us.

You've preached. And for years, I made this excuse. Well, we're too small to preach out in the open air, you know, but then we've been convinced otherwise and say, you know what? We're gonna preach. We're gonna preach at Harps.

We preach at our gas station. We preach in events sometimes. You guys preach in a parade. Tell me about that. I know it's Pastor Randall, but that's still part of church. Like, what's going on with that mindset?

Gospel Witness in Small Towns and Community Events

Yeah, again, you know, just finding ways in your local community to make the gospel known. Pastor Randall, there's a Christmas parade every year, and so we will decorate a trailer, decorate a float, and we will sign up to be a part of the parade, and Pastor Randall will set up in the parade to preach.

I've seen him do it different ways, but the last time and the time before that, we actually took a pulpit and screwed it down into the trailer, and Pastor suit and tie with a microphone stood on the trailer in a pulpit as he was pulled through the parade of hundreds and hundreds of people just preaching the gospel as we passed out little red bags that had candy, church information, Bibles, gospel tracts, and so you get out.

I mean, it was a lot of bags. I don't know, hundreds of bags that we got out, put into the hands of people that had all of those things in it as Pastor Randall's pulled through a parade just preaching Christ.

Yeah, if Christ is worthy of a healthy church, and one of the indicators of a healthy church is a church that is involved in intentional evangelism. Yeah. And, yeah, go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say on, before I lose it, back a little bit when we were talking about, how do you, how would I encourage someone to do this in their community? Well, everything I said, and also just, there's this net, also just faithfulness, right?

To just trusting that God is who he is, that he's going to do what he said he's going to do, and he's going to use the means that he's given us to use. Like, we start to lean too much on the arm of the flesh or our own wisdom, what we're saying, like, well, it doesn't seem like it's working.

I've been, maybe I should try this other method, or maybe I should try this other way. Instead of being faithful to how God has shown us to do it and commanded us to do it, what we inevitably end up doing is saying, I think I'm wiser than God.

Yeah. And that I know how to reach people better than God knows how to reach people. And I know he's shown me this in scripture, but I'm just not seeing anything. Let me try and help God out. And what a dangerous thing to do.

What a foolish and arrogant thing to do.

Let me get more creative, you know? But I think a few words there, consistency, okay? Keep going, keep going. That's where God's blessed with you guys. Faithfulness, and by faithfulness, I'm not using a synonym for consistency.

I'm saying being faithful to the calling, being faithful to Christ, being faithful to the gospel, being faithful to the scriptures. Compassion, you're gonna have people come up and ask. They're gonna be in all sorts of different places, and it'd be real easy for us to just blast people, but it's like, have a compassionate heart, like let's do what we can to communicate the gospel to these people in these discussions.

I always encourage, even if you're a small town, I prefer to go out in pairs, not because of fear, but just because of wisdom and also practicality. If you have one person preaching, that leaves the other person, not only to kind of watch your back or whatever, but also to engage.

Someone comes up, you can begin to talk to them without stopping the preaching. So anyway, just thought,.

Were you gonna interject something there? Well, I was just gonna give an example of just God's faithfulness. So all of that, I said, not leaning on our own wisdom, not getting too hung up on whether or not we see the fruit that we desire to see or not, and then because we don't see the fruit we desire to see, we then question the method.

Don't do that. So when I was preaching with the guys for a long, we had come back to the community shortly after the council from Pastor Randall, and for several months preaching, and I started to get tempted as I'm preaching, and people are just not even acknowledging my existence, they're getting gas, they go in the store, and I'm not seeing anything, nothing's happening.

And I started to get tempted as I'm preaching, in my head, I'm saying to myself, does any of this even matter? Like, nobody's even listening. Does anybody even care? I start having all these thoughts.

So check this out. That went on for several weeks. Well, all of a sudden, one day, this guy named Travis comes up to us and wants to talk to us and wants to know about our church, and he comes to church.

This guy, Travis, for several weeks had been watching us preach in the community. And for those seven weeks that I'm being tempted with all these negative thoughts by, I think we know who, because he knows what God's doing in the background.

In the backdrop, unknown to me, there's this guy named Travis who every Saturday, for several Saturdays, would leave his house, get in his car, come into the community just to find us in order to park somewhere in the background and just listen to us preach for hours.

And I had no idea that that was happening. For several weeks, had no idea that that guy was doing that. He comes to our church, he got saved because of the preaching. He got baptized in our church with his wife.

He, his wife, and his daughter since then for the last year have been faithfully serving and attending the church.