Ok, here’s a recap of our second evangelization outing, again from my perspective only since nobody else wrote anything down for these trips (they will from now on don’t worry)
We drove to the station together, prayed at the station, then got on the train (we actually just barely made it). It was me, Tom, and Andrew.
This time around, I was much bolder and had greater confidence, although I will say that even the first time we went out, after the initial nervousness of speaking to the first person, I personally experienced a boldness in speaking that certainly did not originate with me, and I think my fellow evangelists would agree they felt the same. As you listen to people and pray for them, the words really do come.
The first person I talked to was an old man, sitting by himself reading a book about an actress I’d never heard of. I sat across from him, asked him what his book was about and then asked if I could sit next to him and continue the conversation, and he agreed. He then asked me what I was doing on the train, to which I plainly answered “Talking about Jesus.” He took that in for a second and didn’t really react much at all, so I asked if he believed in God and he responded that he was a Baptist and attended a church in town. After a few questions about his faith and beliefs, I asked if he knew where his beliefs as a Baptist came from, what their origins were. He didn’t know any more than the word “Anabaptist”, which is actually more than most people I’ve talked to. I traced back the Anabaptists to the Anglicans back to the Catholic Church, at which point he realized I was Catholic and became upset. He expressed his distrust and anger towards “any kind of organized, institutional religion.” I presented the teaching on the Eucharist but at that point he had stopped listening and could only think about the organized aspect. So I tried to explain the need for the organization and authority, and the failed experiment of Protestantism, but he stopped me saying that he would not agree no matter what I said and that I should leave. So I left him but not before shaking his hand and getting him to agree to read and pray about John 6, as I typically like to end with. I went and talked with a few more people who do not come to mind.
Now begins the most exciting part of the night, at least for me. I approached two teenage girls who were talking. There were people nearby but mostly out of earshot. I started asking them about their beliefs and after they said they were Baptist we got into a discussion about where the Bible comes from. One girl expressly told me that the Bible was written directly by God and not by men, so I explained the Church’s teaching on inspiration. Then I asked them about what they believe as Baptists versus other “denominations” (I put that in quotes because I very much dislike that word being applied to the Catholic Church, since it is the original Church founded by Christ, and even if you don’t believe that, it is historically the oldest). She told me in a very calm and nice way that they mostly believe the Bible but other groups like Catholics worship Mary (she did not know I was Catholic yet). I asked her where she heard that, and she said she had a Catholic friend. So I told her I was Catholic, corrected her, and she very nicely and laughingly said thank you. I immediately moved in for the Eucharist. I’m not an evangelization expert by any means, but I can tell you that in my few experiences doing this, it is the Eucharist that wins people’s attention. Many times it is all I need to talk about before they agree to take some literature from us or look into it on their own, which is our end goal. Or it is the thing that immediately sends them running, just like it did for Jesus.
I asked the girls if their church did a communion service, to which they responded yes. I asked them what it means and why they do it. One said it was to bring people together, the other said it was like Jesus’s body and blood. When I asked where it comes from in the Bible, they did not know. So I just jumped right to it and told them the teaching on the Eucharist, and one of the girl’s jaws literally dropped. As I kept explaining and reciting the Bread of Life discourse, her jaw dropped further. She was stupefied by what I was saying, and she actually thanked me for telling her because she had never heard that before.
As I started to get on a roll, a man who had been eavesdropping jumped into the conversation and essentially called me a liar very loudly. He began to tell me that I had no knowledge of what I was saying and that I just bought into something I didn’t understand. When I began to ask for some kind of substance to his accusation, he countered with the question “What is the oldest book in the Bible?” I told him I did not know, which prompted him to say “See if you don’t even know that, you don’t have the knowledge of God that I have and so you don’t know what you’re talking about.” At this point he was so loud that Tom came over and said that the oldest book was Job, which was true and burst his bubble a bit. But he just kept on yelling at us, without really making any kind of argument or sense at all. He became so upset that even people who weren’t really on our side started sticking up for us. The girls I was talking to asked him to sit back down and be quiet so they could finish talking to me, but he wouldn’t. So we handed the girls some pamphlets, thanked them, and got off the train.
I think that’s probably enough for now. The next blog post should have pictures and accounts from other people besides just me…
