Riverbend - Day 1

For the first night of the Riverbend festival it seemed to start a little slow. I’m sure it was just that I hit the streets before the majority of people made their way downtown. For the first night alone I was able to pass out 500 giant one hundred dollar bill tracts. Not bad for just a few hours work. Most people took them without saying a word but I did get quite a bit of rejection as well. Most of the comments that I heard were things like…
What is this?
What’s this for?
WhooHoo! I’ve got a hundred bucks!
Can I buy beer with this?
As I was standing out on the street corner passing out the tracts a couple of kids came up to me and asked if they could have some more because they wanted to help me pass them out. After I checked with their parents I loaded the kids up with tracts and they had a blast handing them out. Very sweet of those kids, huh?

As I was passing the movie theater downtown I noticed two Mormon missionaries sitting on a bench just taking in the scenery. I approached them with the tracts and we began to have a talk. They were from the Red Bank area so when I invited them to my home for a Bible study they said that they couldn’t because I lived outside of their area. “No problem.” I said, “I will come to you. Just give me your contact information.” So they did. I will be making a house call to these missionaries very soon.

At one pointed I began to notice a lot of people carrying some other types of Gospel tracts. I followed the crowd looking for the source thinking I was going to run into some Jehovah’s Witnesses. But I was wrong, it happened to be some guys from a Baptist church in Dayton, TN. We had a brief talk and then they invited me to hang out with them while one of their members was going to do some street preaching. I told them that I was just going to kinda hang back and listen to what they had to say. I knew that this would be a great opportunity to use a spring board to talk to others.
As soon as this guy hit the street corner he opened up his Bible and started preaching away. Don’t get me wrong I am a big fan of open air preaching – if it is done rightly. This guy didn’t attempt to draw a crowd and I couldn’t really make out anything that he was saying. The people that were passing by were having a good laugh. When I noticed them, I would get their attention and asked them what they thought of those guys. Most people didn’t really have anything good to say…at all. I even noticed one of the guys talking to 3 teenage girls and he was flaring his arms all over the place and I could almost hear him a block away. (Back ‘er down a notch or two, my friend.) As Christians we have to be so careful when speaking to others. Watch your body language. Pay close attention to the tone of your voice. If your listener is soft spoken (like most teenage girls) then adjust your countenance as you speak to them.

I saw one guy skipping past the street preacher smiling and I knew I had to speak to him. Believe it or not his name was Damien. He was one cool dude. I liked Damien a lot. He is a 55 year old goth-type of guy. He was sporting a pony tail, black painted fingernails, and dressed all in black. We had a great talk and about the things of God and hopefully I left him with a lot to think about. Wes was the next person I talked to but our talk didn’t last too long because his buddy came looking for him. Wes told me he was a Christian so I asked him to open his Bible to Exodus 20 and judge himself by the standard of the 10 Commandments and see how he turned out. I hope he does it.

There was one church out there that had a whole truck loaded down with bottle water that they were passing out. One of the guys stopped me and asked me what I had. I told him “Gospel tracts. Would you like one?” He said “We are just two Christians reaching people two different ways” them he handed me a water. I was very impressed by this group. They had people all over the block that I was on passing out waters to the thisty crowd. It was so good to see the way that Christ can use his body of believers to reach people in all types of ways. As I was making my way back to my car I again passed this group as they began to circle up and pray before they left. I bet there were twenty of them or so. I just loved seeing that. I will be sure and contact this church just to let them know how their presence was noticed.

So the end of my first night of Riverbend this is what I left with:
500 tracts distributed
3 Great one-to-one conversations
2 LDS missionaries presented with God’s unchanging truth
One church using something as simple as bottle water to reach a community with God’s love.

All of the glory goes to God alone. I am again just so thankful that He will use a chuckle-head like me to reach out to this world. Keep reading, more Riverbend adventures to come.