Over the weekend, I went to the Downingtown Christmas Parade with the Berean street ministry team. I thought for small-town Pennsylvania, the 1.7-mile parade route was rather generous in scope. The crowds were huge, too, with 60-degree temperatures blessing our December skies. As a result of all this -- but more importantly, God's providence -- we were able to hand out 1900 tracts.
There's a scene in my favorite movie, Back to the Future, where Marty expresses shock at the fact that Doc has fashioned a time machine out of a DeLorean, a trendy but short-lived car brand of the early 80s. Sometimes we are surprised by the ways in which things can be repurposed. Just think of Paul, repurposed by God from a murderer of Christians to a leader among them.
As the parade really got going on Saturday, I found myself walking in the street as if I belonged there with the other exhibitors. As I walked, I would hand out tracts to the people who lined the sidewalks, but sometimes I handed tracts to the people who were actually in the parade, too. Most notably that day, I got to hand tracts to a pair of gentlemen -- one younger, one older -- riding in a DeLorean with its gull-wing doors open. The moment was memorable (it's always memorable to see a DeLorean in the wild), but it also got me thinking about the concept of repurposing.
As Christians, we are commanded to go forth and fish for people. That is why we evangelize outside the church, not just within it: because the greatest gatherings of unsaved people are outside the church's walls. Unbelievers never gather for the purpose of hearing the gospel. It's not something they think about. It's not something they would do. But they do gather for an untold number of other things. If we are going to reach these people with the gospel, we need to be thinking about how we can repurpose those gatherings for the sake of Christ.
To that end, parades constitute an EXCELLENT repurposing of a secular event (so excellent, in fact, that I chose to capitalize the word). In Downingtown, we handed out 1900 tracts, but I would surmise that if we hadn't run out of time in our personal schedules, we could have conceivably doubled that number. Just based on what my eyeballs were able to process, I believe there may have been at least 5,000 people there, maybe more.
Acts 2 tells the story of Peter preaching in public and 3,000 people coming to faith and being baptized that day. Parades, concerts, and sporting events bring together crowds even larger than that. You don't need to preach like Peter to do the Lord's work amongst these crowds. Just go get some tracts from any one of a number of awesome online retailers (One Million Tracts, Gospel Tract Planet), hit the parade route, and start handing them out. All you have to do is walk up and down the line, saying something simple like, "Merry Christmas" or "Did you get one of these?"
Don't worry that you're not "leading people to Christ" in large droves like Peter. Your goal is to scatter as many seeds for the kingdom as possible, and trust that God will use them as he purposes. Some of those people may throw those tracts out -- it's true. But others may get them home, read them, recognize their sin, and understand that Jesus has been missing from their life.
Check your local calendar. There may still be time to hit up some Christmas parades this December. If it's too late in your area, start looking at St. Patrick's Day, which usually generates a few large processions of its own. You will be amazed by how much work you can do, in such a small amount of time. Get some quirky tracts like the Santa ones we used, and you will be amazed by how much fun you can have, too.
-JDM-
