On 17 June 2023, the ‘Bonne Nouvelle’ Evangelical Church in Meaux (77) held an outreach day in their town with OM France. As you are aware, it is no longer necessary to wait until the National Day of Evangelism (which only occurs once a year) to invite OM France to help with an event like this.
On that rather thundery day, 22 church members and their pastor, Daniel Wobos, took part in this adventure.
Here is what the pastor shared with us: ‘The training in street evangelism we received was a timely reminder of the simple but important elements necessary in evangelism. These were a great help to us once we started.’
He then added: ‘After a morning of teaching and prayer with OM, we divided into 3 groups and went into different neighbourhoods in the town. My group was assigned to the Beauval area, which is majority Muslim. The Lord led me straightaway to a man who was drinking coffee on the terrace. The training had taught us how important it was to first of all listen carefully to the people we encountered. This is what I did. The man welcomed me warmly and opened up to tell me about his whole life, his work, his divorce, and his daughter, whom he was raising alone. After about twenty minutes, he invited me to sit down and have a coffee with him. We continued our conversation, and all of a sudden I had the idea of asking him if God answered his earnest prayers (he was a Muslim). He could not give me a definite answer.
I noticed he was smoking an e-cigarette, and asked him if he would like to give up smoking. He told me ‘yes.’ I then shared with him the first miracle Christ did in my life when he set me free from cigarettes. I introduced Jesus Christ to him, telling him how much Jesus loved him and was willing to do the same thing for him that he had done for me. I offered to pray for him, and he accepted. We exchanged telephone numbers and promised to meet up again. I praise God for helping me to listen patiently, for that gave me an opening with this man, as we had learned that very morning.’
This was only one conversation among a good number of others shared at the end of the afternoon by this small group of tired but happy people. The members of the Meaux church want to carry on with days of evangelism like this on their own, and make use of the two weeks of online training available to them. At OM, we hope to help other churches in this way and organise more such days of evangelism that do a lot of good, not only to Christians but also to the people they meet on the street. If this experience is something that interests you, get in contact with us!
Élise Ha, Communication officer