Sonshine 08- The fields are white!

A Lot of people ask me  why I , a 42 year old Pastor would go to a weekend music festival without my kids. The answer? To evangelize! But Pastor, isn’t Sonshine a Christian music festival? Yes, the artists are Christians, and fortunately, they do attract a mixed crowd of believers and unbelievers. Unfortunately, however, most of the messages coming from the stage between songs are more along the lines of self help and Jesus is love rather than a true Gospel message. Darrin Brownlee and I had an agenda: To interview as many people as we could, both Christians and Non-Christians to discover what a Christian is in their minds. It led to a lot of teaching, correcting, and evangelizing! The kids are being brainwashed into thinking a simple belief in Jesus is all they need to be Christians. I heard the word repentance once, and the young man who used it didn’t really understand it! The easy -believism that these kids have been indoctrinated with has rolled over into their Bible study habits; one Christian told me he hadn’t opened the Bible in a month (his youth pastor told us that all they are trying to do in the youth group is build a community and introduce these kids to Jesus’ love. A good way to start, youth Pastor, is to train them to read and to love God’s Word!

The festival atmosphere lent itself well to open air preaching. We found a location on a busy path where we could do some trivia, attract a good crowd, and share with the people, young and old alike, the complete Gospel. Again, in the three open air sessions that we did, there was no lack of people who did not fully understand the Gospel even though they were at a Christian event! The third time we spoke, We were escorted by security out to the front gate. It seems we needed a wrist bracelet to be in the tent area!

Well, we were indeed told that we needed a wrist bracelet, but when we explained that we were interviewing people and we said on the tapes that we were at Sonshine 08, they said we could have a press pass! We now had access to the inside of the shows, but it did not change our goal, which was to interview as many people as we could and share the Gospel with those who would listen.

 

By the end of the day, we had handed out all of our tracts, (over 1,000) all of our prizes, had done several on-camera interviews, three open-airs. We got to share the Gospel in one form or another to over 1000 people, but there was so much more to do! I pray that next year, there will be many more evangelists that will go to these summer festivals with the goal of reaching the lost.

~ by pastorboy on July 21, 2008.