For those of you who were at the prayer meeting on 3rd September, you will know that I have been reflecting on the old-fashioned activity of street preaching. It isn’t very common in recent times. And if I’m honest, I inwardly cringe a little bit when I see someone with their little stall or board, talking about salvation to absolutely no-one who is listening.
Just lately I have been seeing a few street preachers on Tik-Tok. A guy called Ollie Sabatelli in Brighton or Jesse Samuel Ngoma in Croydon, or many others who make multiple Tik-Tok posts of street preaching, and demonstrate that, far from dying out, there’s a real increase in young people going out on the streets to proclaim Jesus. I confess that when I first saw them, I was a bit concerned – are they preaching the good news of “eternal damnation”? But the more I stopped to listen, I found that they were far more nuanced than that – their message is, for sure, a message of repentance from sin, but it’s also a declaration of the love, forgiveness and grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Inevitably, especially in a city like Brighton, you will get baited by members of the gay etc community who want you to spell out what the Bible says about homosexuality, so that they can then jump up and down in outrage calling you a homophobic bigot and a hateful person. But Ollie and the others are at pains to assert the love of God for all – even the gay etc community, although he loves them just as he loved us in our sin, loved so much that he didn’t want to leave us in our sin.
Yes, these young people can be a bit too “shouty”, maybe sometimes lacking empathy for the effect of shouting at their hearers. But they would probably argue – better to be momentarily offended by loud preaching than never have the gospel come to your ears and end up in hell.
I think it’s encouraging that there are young men and women who have rediscovered the voice of the gospel out in public places. May they continue to preach with passion, boldness, and grace and that (1 Cor 9:22) by all means some will be saved.