Best Places in Blount County to Share Your Faith

Blount County's best spots to go witnessing. I'm not talking about going to church & telling everybody how God healed your cold or gave you a raise. I'm talking about going into the highways & byways & compelling them to come in to the Kingdom, cold turkey, just go up & start talking. I'd like to hear your ideas.

1. Sandy Springs Park Especially in the warm weather you will find many people milling around just hanging out with their pals or resting from playing basketball, or going on romantic walks on the greenway (those are always interesting when you mention that if you look with lust you've committed adultery on your heart, talk about letting the air out!). Sometimes you can catch 5 or 6 young people hanging out at a picnic table, kind of like mini-street preaching.

2. Springbrook Park Similar to Sandy Springs but not quite as many people & they are spread out in more inconvenient places. The pavilion is the best spot to catch groups hanging around.

3. Foothills Mall* I have an asteric because it would be better for you than me. We were told not to witness there any more by a security guard after a guy we were speaking to got too loud. But you should try it until they make you stop. Lots of high school kids there for no particular reason other than to see other kids. Good in any weather.

4. Wal-Mart (Alcoa HWY) parking lot & outside front entrance. There's always some guy out there smoking a cigaret while his wife or whoever is inside shopping. He won't run back inside on you because cigarets are expensive & he wants to get his money's worth. We spoke to eight young men who were standing around outside together one night in 23 degree weather! But they were not going in until they had finished their smoke. The new Wal-Mart hasn't quite caught on as well yet as a hang out.

5. Broadway in Downtown Maryville Lots of people here going in & out of the bars from 5:00 pm to midnight. A little older crowd than the average you see at the park, plus they may be drunk, which can make it interesting. Having a partner with you is recommended.

6. Thunderworld Combines aspects of 3,4 & 5 Mostly young people although some mid to older. Once again, they have to go outside to smoke which makes them easy to talk to. There is a bar there so some of these people may well be enebriated. (did I spell that right?)

7. Your Living Room This can work well from two angles if you have teenagers. When they bring their friends over you sit them down and take them through the Law, judgement, hell, repentance, the sacrifice, forgiveness & grace. One of three things could happen: <a>.It could go in one ear & out the other, which is not an unusual occurance when talking to teenagers. <b>.They could repent of their sins & put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord & Savior (the best option) or <c>.It will really wierd them out & they will leave (not a bad second choice if they don't go for b. My daughter had a particularly seedy friend that she brought to the house one time, we started going through the Law & got stuck on lying & hell. I've never seen or even heard about him since).

8. Any Convenient Store with a Laundrymat People are sitting around outside killing time, & of course, smoking a cigaret, waiting for you to move in with words of life.


Well, I was hoping to do a top ten, but that is all I could come up with. Let me what you think of these & if you have a favorite spot.

Earth Day - Confessions of an Environmentalist

In honor of Earth Day I have to tell you about a witnessing encounter I had a little while back. Really I didn't get to witness to him, we just gave him a gospel tract while Donnie, Ronnie & I were at the park one Wednesday. I don't even remember what the guy looks like, we must have given it to him as he walked or ran by on the Maryville Greenbelt. Later that evening he emailed us since we had a contact address on the tract. Unfortunately I lost my last responce to him. But this is most of the correspondence we had together. It should give you an interesting perspective on the mindset of the environmentalist cult:

from:Matt

" Does your church recycle? I was handed a 'Million Dollar Question' bill this evening while at the greenbelt presunably by a member of your church as they had www.gmcog.com stamped on them and at the least they could have said is "Please recycle this". Or you can have printed with "Please Recycle" on it somewhere. Any thing we can do to save the planet God has given us... "

my reply:

" I am glad you contacted us. We have found that the most favorable way to recycle those bills is to: a. Read the message. B. Obey what you read. C. Pass it on to someone else. Just one of those bills can go a long way when that happens.
thank you for your interest,
faithfully,
Kevin "

from Matt:

" Well, that is a nice thought but not always one that comes to the random people that you are handing these out to. Which shows that you either missed the point of my note or that your church is umwilling to accept responsibility for the fact that it could be contributing to waste and trash. What percentage of the people that you hand these to actually read them and take anything away from this message? What percentage read them and then crumple it up and toss it somewhere? I guess a small percentage might actually carry to a trash can to dispose of it, I bet a very small percentage think of recycling it with their scrap paper or passing it on to someone else.

And how sincere is it ti hand out to strangers as you pass by a clever attention getting fake million dollar bill with some rhetoric to make someone feel guilty or scared, threatened with hell for the life they've lived. My God is about Love, not fear and guilt. I'm not sure why I felt the need to write you more on this subject, it is very unlike me but something really bothers me about it. But I wish you well and just hope you think through your actions as a group. Have a good weekend.

Matt "

my reply:

" Who is your God? "

from Matt:

" My God is the one who sent Jesus to be a teacher among us. He's also the one who inspired Buddha, and is the basis for many of the world's religion's. I believe that God had to appear to different peoples in different ways so that they might understand hin better. I think that for someone (such as Robert J Pruitt) to say that "...there is only one true religion..." to bring his sheep into "...one body - one fold, one Church." is a very dangerous and narrowminded thought. Hitler thought that there was only one true race, and the few radical Muslim terrorists believe that their God is better that ours and their religion will prevail. Dangerous narrowminded thoughts in my opinion. I don't know exactly who your God is, but I don't care much for your religion. Please don't be offended, I'm just sharing my opinion, and you are absolutely welcome to yours.

Funny, you still don't seem to answer my simple question about the issue of recycling the flyers you hand out? My God wants us all to take better care of our planet.

Thanks again for your time. This has been interesting.

Matt "
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I lost my last response! Can you believe it? I am sure it was dynamic words of wisdom. The best I can remember, here is how it went:

" Let me ask you something, if I did not recycle & conserve what would happen? Would it be bad? Should I be scared? Should I feel guilty? Environmentalist use this arguement & it is a legitamate arguement. But, if we should be concerned about what may happen to us on this world which is temporal, how much more should we be concerned about what is eternal?

faithfully,
Kevin "

Hell is bad. If we love people we will warn them about it.

The god Matt is talking about does not exist. He has made up a god in his mind that likes what he likes and hates what he hates. If you don't want to feel guilty you try to make up a god that wont hold you accountable, then you won't feel guilty about your sins. Did you notice when he said, "...something really bothers me about it."? When he read the tract & the Commandments were brought before him the Holy Spirit used them to convict him of his sin. That is what bothered him.

"Expelled" Worth the Risk

I went to see Ben Stein's "Expelled" the movie tonight. First I experienced the humiliation of getting old as I went to buy the ticket. The girl charged me six dollars at the ticket counter. At first I didn't think anything of it, but as I was waiting for the rest of my group (Chance, Michael, Jon & Brook) I remembered when I called about the movie times, the recording said the price for adults $8.50. So I looked at my ticket & it said "child" on it. As I waited outside, Jon & Brook showed up & I joked that I may have to let Brook use my ticket since I may not pass as a child. They informed me that I had been given the senior citizen's discount.

Anyhow, the movie is worth seeing. It is a disturbing message of repression, censorship & blacklisting of scientist & professors who teach or write about intellegent design in anything other than a negative way. Stein does a good job of combining interviews, humor, inspiration, history & shock value to drive home his point. At first I thought some of the old historical videos might have been over the top, but by the time you see all the evidence you're afraid he might not be off the mark much at all. When you listen to the logic (or lack) of the evolutionists, you start to understand their agenda. It's not about science, it's about money, getting rid of God so they can set their own moral standards, & fear of being wrong in their own religion of evolution that they have invested so much of their life, even their soul in. But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself.

"I'm Going to Hell"

We talked to a Muslim yesterday evening at Sandy Springs Park who said, "I'm going to hell." even before we could take him through the Law. When I asked him why he said, "because I'm not a good person." So I asked him why he thought that & he said he has done many bad things. So we went through the Law just to verify that & he was correct (there was a girl whose father was a preacher & a young man from the Far East who were with him, they agreed they were going to hell also). He didn't believe though, that you needed someone to pay for your sins. He said that there were scales that would weigh your good against your bad & if the good outweighs the bad, you were in. The only trouble with that kind of thinking is that the Bible says, "there is no one who does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:3) The scales are turned against us.

American Idol Gives Back Because, "We're All Innocent"

I guess it is a little wierd to admit this on an Christian evangelism blog, but I was watching American Idol on tv last Tuesday for the competition part of Idol Gives Back week. David Cook sang a song, We're All innocent (not his best performance) & showed his hand with "give back" written on it. He was then commended by the judges for the nice sentiment. of course my first thought was, "If we are truely all innocent, we would probably have a lot less that we would need to give back to." Does we're all innocent mean that nobody has ever lied, stolen, hated, blasphemed, committed adulterey, murdered, ect.., or does it mean that we are so stupid we don't know any better, or could it be, most likely, that in the world's eyes, there is no such thing as sin so there is no such thing as sinners. If we think that way it is easy to get tears in our eyes about how "unfair" the world is, & if everyone could just be more "tolerant" then we wouldn't have all these problems we are having. When they say that what they really mean is "I want to do what I want to do & you don't have any right to tell me I'm wrong & if there are any consequences for my actions then you need to pay for it & we'll call it giving back" I'm sure there are some good things done with the money donated on that show, but it is not because we're all innocent. The fact is, we are all guilty & have earned the suffering we receive. It is only by God's grace that we have not completely received the just payments for our actions. It is only by humbling purselves & turning to the one who is innocent, Jesus Christ, & accepting the payment He made for our crimes that we will be declared "paid in full" on the day of judgement.

"Commitment to What?"

Last Wednesday I went with Donnie to Sandy Springs Park & we witnessed to 6 people (3 sets of 2). Out of the six there was one particular young man we had a good conversation with who was genuinely interested in how to get saved. He had recently come out of the army & was concerned about where he stood with God. After speaking to him about sin, hell, mercy, repentance, & grace we left him with a small book with the gospel of John in it. He told us he would start reading it that night. Pray that God will do a work in his heart.

Of the other people we talked to, the conversation was much more typical of what I have found of watered down gospel results. It never ceases to amaze me the adjectives you hear over and over again describing someone's "spiritual experience" which produces no fruit. They will say things like, "I got saved when I was 14 but i kind of went back into the world again," or "I made a commitment to Christ 5 years ago, I just haven't been as close to God as I should" or "I received Jesus into my heart, so I'm saved," & then they go on with their life like nothing happened. What did they get saved from? What did they make a commitment to? It is no wonder that the divorce rate of professed "Christians" is hardly different than non-Christians when the Church, out of desire to show a high success rate of "conversions", is willing to take so quickly someone's claim of commitment. If we take our commitment to God so lightly, why should we take marriage seriously? We seem to have forgotten the meaning of commitment. These people have never taken the time to try to understand what they are getting into, or what Jesus is trying to get them out of. "Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Matthew 10:39

God wants all of you. Not just a little effort every now and then. Not some religious chant you say in hopes of the magic cure. He died for you. Now what?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Movie, Coming Out April 18th

Ben Stein's movie about the suppression of intelligent design study in academia will be coming April 18th, an important date in history (my birthday, I guess that's where the "No Intelligence Allowed" comes from), so we need to see this, here is the trailer:


Here is an interview Ben had with Bill O'Reilly about the movie

Militant Atheist: Rebel Without a Cause

I had a brief comment from a mr. x today who challenged me to go to a website (which turned out to be his) to try to "help" him. Which I guess is a good advertizing ploy to get people to your website.
Of course when you get to the site, most of what you read is a bunch of gobbledygook that really doesn't make a lot of sense, and when you think about it, has no chance of making sense when there is no authority to make sense from. You have to shut off a good portion of your brain to not recognize there is a creator. And if you are shutting it off to that, how much more are you shutting it off to? Is there a right and wrong? By whose standards? And who cares? Which may be the real point anyhow. When someone has decided there is something in their life that they don't want to answer for, the easiest way to solve the problem is to try to eliminate the person they would have to answer to. Why do you think those third graders were plotting to kill their teacher? Or the stories you hear about on the news where children kill their parents. It is the same thing. If we can only "kill" God, we won't have to answer to Him, "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." A well known publisher understood this concept when he wrote, "I have left my religious conversion behind and settled into a comfortabl state of atheism. I have come to think that religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the begining of time." Larry Flint in his book An Unseemly Man.
Psalm 14:1 says. "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." & verse 4 says, "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord." Atheists try to hide their desire to sin under the pretense that there is no sin. That won't hold much weight on judgement day.

Americans Don't Like the Direction of Country

A new CBS/New York Times poll (of course we really trust them to tell the truth) reported that 81% of Americans think that this country is "going in the wrong direction". Now let's assume for a minute that the report is accurate. Why do we have such a poor attitude in our country right now? The poll shows that the economy is the most important issue in the political world also. It seems that moral & spiritual issues are hardly even on the map. If this is true about what is first in the hearts & minds of Americans then it is no wonder the country is going in the wrong direction. You would think with all the work everyone has been doing to build each others self-esteem that we would all be content. But I guess the problem is really with everyone else & not me. We need to take a look in the Bible at Matthew 5:25-34 to regain our perspective on what will get us back in the right direction.
Here is the news link for that poll:
http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=8117232