Outreach Report: Preaching Away in Margaritaville 4-21-2011

As expected, people were everywhere.

I had the pleasure to team up with Justin Edwards and other members of The Speak Truth Project in Charlotte, NC this past Thursday to evangelize the attendees at the Jimmy Buffet Concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.  We arrived at @ 4:45 p.m., prayed, and packed our backpacks full of give-away Bibles and tracts.  Nature was calling, so we found the Porta-johns and started to talk to the people we were waiting in line with about sin, righteousness, and judgment for about 45 minutes.

Thanks to a providential combination of alcohol consumption and urinary physiology, we had a ready-made crowd for preaching.

After visiting the Porta-johns, I did a little open-air preaching to the "captive audience":


I preached the first time for about 20 minutes or so.  As expected, we had many self-righteous people at this event.  Given the fact that many Jimmy Buffet fans are of middle to upper-middle-class status, most people thought they were good, moral, people who simply came to have a good time and kick back a few brewskis.  While I certainly don't have a problem with relaxing, having a good time, enjoying the weather, and listening to good music; I knew that for many in the Margaritaville crowd this translated to drunkenness, lust, fornication, etc.  Once the open-air preaching started, it didn't take long to hear from a few self-righteous young, female hecklers with mouths like sailors that were willing to boldly glory in their own sin in front of others yet still proclaim their own self-righteousness.  They simmered down after I compared their filthy menstrual rags of self-righteousness with Christ's righteous standards (Isaiah 64:6).

The girl facing me with a drink in her hand was one of the hecklers.

Then I used the self-righteousness of the hecklers as a stepping stone to preach to the crowd concerning the reality of their impending judgment should they die without repentance and faith toward Christ.  I focused on how their own self-proclaimed goodness is a faux morality as compared with God's righteous standards.  As usual, some ignored me since they were put off that I would come and upset their revelry, whereas others quietly stood by listening.  A few thanked us for being there.  The lady in the green t-shirt below genuinely thanked us for being there and told us that she was upset that I was was heckled.  I told her that I'm surprised I didn't get more heckling given the self-righteous nature of the crowd combined with the steady rise in blood alcohol levels. 

We then passed out tracts and had many fruitful conversations for over an hour.

Then, I decided to pass out tracts to the folks lining up to get into the gates of the amphitheater and then I open air preached to them for about 8-10 minutes.

After preaching about 30 seconds, someone about three rows over (whether male or female, I couldn't tell) started wildly yelling and screaming things like "Shut that guy up!  Hey you, shut the $*#& up!  I don't wanna hear that @#%*!"  This caused the crowd to really pay attention to what I was saying and the screaming/yelling continued on and off for about two minutes.  Then, providentially the gate attendants came out and this person quieted down long enough to allow me to finish my gospel presentation.

Many people listened attentively in spite of the general self-righteousness of the crowd.

We then did more one on one evangelism and enjoyed some great fellowship:

These two men and the one woman were with our evangelism team.  We had great fellowship!

After several hours outside the amphitheater, we headed back to our cars @ 7:20 p.m. to get some bottled water and meet up with the entire group.  As we walked back, it was clear that we had reached our "profitability" limit as much of the crowd was already drunk.  We then decided to leave and head over to the UNC-Charlotte campus for some one-on-one evangelism and open-air preaching.  We didn't do any open-air since there were too few students on campus given the fact that the school was closed the next day, but we had some great conversations with both true and false professors alike.  For more information about this outreach, see Justin Edward's account of it at The Speak Truth Project.  My dearest thanks goes to Justin Edwards and his crew for the invite, warm welcome, sweet fellowship, and most importantly, the opportunity to proclaim the Holy name of Christ to people who are in desperate need of His glorious grace.