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WHY STREET PREACH ?
Preaching in the open-air or on the street is not a strange thing! It is the Bible way of many who have gone before us.
John Wesley said: "To this day field preaching is a cross to me, but I know my commission and see NO OTHER WAY of preaching the gospel to EVERY creature"
FISHERS OF MEN Just like fishermen, we must not wait for souls to come to us, but must actively seek them, and GO compel them to come in, that His house may be full!
Jesus Christ told us to "GO YE into ALL the World, and preach the gospel to EVERY creature" Mark 16:15
As our example he went through "EVERY city and village... PREACHING" Luke 8:1
Not to just a few! vs 4 "when MUCH people were gathered together... he spake"
He did not just live his life as an example: "LIFE STYLE EVANGELISM"
He gave his life a ransom: "LIFE SAVING EVANGELISM"!
He preached to multitudes "the WHOLE MULTITUDE of the country of Gadarenes" vs 37
To crowds so great they "thronged him" vs 42
To fulfill our commision we must GO to where the crowds are!
Consider the following names:
Jesus Christ
"as the Father hath sent me so send I you"
John the Baptist
Apostles
Disciples
Old Testament Prohpets
Peter Waldo and his "Poor Men of Lyon" who sold their wordly goods that they could give themselves totally to preaching
Waldenses and Anabaptists
Albigenses
John Wycliff who organized a band of travelling preachers, one of whom converted John Huss
Lollards which means "Babblers" obviously a name given to them in derision, by the enemies of the gospel.
John Huss burned in 1415 for being "infected with the leprosy of of the Waldenses" and having preached Wycliff doctrines.
Moravians
Open-Air preachers of the Great Awakening in Wales: William Wroth, Walter Cradock, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands
George Whitefield
"Finding the pulpits are denied me, and the poor colliers are ready to perish for lack of knowledge, I went to them, and preached on a mount to upwards of 200. Blessed be God, that the ice is now broken, and I have now taken the field... I thought it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for His pulpit, and the heavens for His soundingboard: and who, when the gospel was refused by the Jews, sent His servants into the highways and hedges.
"I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields."
"I now preach to ten times more people than I should, if had been confined to the Churches.""
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church
"I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday. Having been all my life ( till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church. In the evening I began expounding our Lords Sermon on the Mount (one pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching, though I suppose there were churches at that time also)"
"I am well assured that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit."
"To this day field preaching is a cross to me, but I know my commission and see no other way of preaching the gospel to every creature".
NOTE: John and his brother Charles were influenced during a misions trip to the Americas by the example of the Moravians and "on a day much to be remembered" was "clearly convinced of unbelief" by the Moravian Open Air preacher Peter Boehler
John Bunyon
John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian Church
D. L. Moody
C. H. Spurgeon
"If I were utterly selfish and had no care for anything but my own happiness, I would choose, If I might under God, to be a soul winner, for never did I know perfect overflowing, unuterable happiness of the purest and most ennobling order till I first heard of one who had sought and found the Saviour through my means."
"It would be very easy to prove that revivals of religion have usually been accompanied, if not caused, by a considerable amount of preaching out of doors, or in unusual places."
"No sort of defense is needed for preaching out of doors, but it would need very potent arguments to prove that a man had done his duty who has never preached beyond the walls of his meeting-house. A defense is required for services within buildings than for worship outside of them."
On the value of Open-Air Preaching: "It is the very back-bone of the movement to win the non-church-going element. The more of it the better, the more of it the better, - the whole world around!"
"Glorious were those great gatherings in the fields and commons which lasted throughout the long period in which Wesley and Whitefield blessed our nation. Field preaching was the wild note of the birds singing in the trees, in testimony that the true spring-time of religion had come. Birds in cages may sing more sweetly, perhaps, but their music is not so natural, nor so sure a pledge of the coming summer. It was a blessed day when Methodists and others began to proclaim Jesus in open air; then were the gates of hell shaken, and the captives of the devil were set free by hundreds and thousands."
William Booth and the Salvation Army
"I may say that a large proportion of the successes of the Salvation Army has been due, in my estimation, humanly, to our open-air operations. ... in the ordinary course of things, we should have, you will easily see, no chance without open-air work."
Robert Flockhart
"You will never get at the ignorant and profligate mass with out open air preaching. I had to go to bonds and imprisonments for doing what our Master did, for he preached far oftener, by the roadside and by the seaside than in the synagogues."
Watchman Nee
F.B. Meyer
Roland Hill (the great Welch preacher)
A. W. Tozer saved hearing a street preacher
Billy Sunday saved hearing a street preacher
NOW IT IS OUR TURN AND TIME!
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