I don’t recall who initiated the idea, but a number of churches in our community decided to band together and hold a city-wide outreach. It was the biggest thing any of us had ever done up to that time. We rented the band shell in a downtown park. We brought in an outside evangelist with a powerful testimony. We rented a massive sound system. We bought advertising and printed flyers. It was going to be massive success.
On the day of the event, the park was only a third full and nearly all of them were church members. Still, we persevered. The praise teams each took their turn. The senior pastors all had their parts. The evangelist gave his testimony about his life as a criminal and how God had set him free. Then came the altar call. The moment we had all been waiting for. But nobody came. Not one person. It was a massive disappointment.
In a stunning diminuendo, one of the pastors dismissed the crowd and we quietly began to break down the equipment and pack it up. Had we missed it completely? Nobody said it but everybody thought it. “What a waste.”
Sarah and I were rolling cables when the car drove up. Sarah was the first to speak to the couple, which made me very anxious because this was not a neighborhood in which you just walked up to stray cars. Then she called me over. The woman driving went right to the point. “We listened to everything from our home.” She gestured to the homes on the other side of the river. “My husband wants to get saved.”
I took him over to one of the hundreds of now-empty benches and, in the glow of the street light, took him through the Gospel and finally led him in prayer as he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
Thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours went into that outreach. The question that pierced me that night was simple: “What is the value of a soul?”
Years later we held an outreach at the Ponda Mali Grounds, which is right in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods of Nakuru, Kenya. The area’s street children and adults are among the most desperate and dangerous. As we walked the grounds we were surrounded by runny-nosed children – not from colds or flu, but because their nasal cavities were burned out from sniffing glue – a cheap escape from life.
On the third night of the outreach, the rains were so intense that only 10 people stood stoically in the rain. The pastor urged me to cancel the service. “It’s a waste of time.”
“I’m not preaching to the 10 we can see. They’re church members. That’s why they’re standing in the rain. I’m preaching to the ones we can’t see.” As it came time for the altar call, the clouds parted and the rains stopped. The people who had been hiding from the weather came out from everywhere. Sixteen people were saved that night and the prayer line went on for more than an hour.
Jesus often traveled with great crowds following him, but the most powerful stories of the New Testament are of the people on the edges: the woman with the issue of blood; the woman at the well; the blind beggar; the crippled man by the pool. Jesus came for that seemingly forsaken man taking his last breaths before dying on a criminal’s cross. He came for that husband and wife listening to the Gospel being preached across the river. He came for the hidden lost waiting for the sun to come out.
Whether one or a thousand answer the call to Christ, I have never ever preached the Gospel that was a waste of time. What is the value of a soul? Look to the Cross. “Paid in full… It is finished.”
“But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12-14 ESV).