Evangelism Team: Dublin

Each year the College students split up in to teams and partner with a local church to help them for a week with outreach and evangelism. This year our students went to Dublin, Larne and Limavady. This week we'll hear from the Dublin team and next week from the Larne and Limavady teams.

Our evangelism team this year went to North City Baptist Church in Dublin. Amos Kennedy led the team, consisting of Bryan Cruise, Josh Porter, Tom Kanwischer, Andy Scott and myself (Sam Thomson).

We arrived on Sunday for their morning worship service. Amos preached from John 12:37-47, calling us to put away pride and barriers to belief and to trust in Jesus. After celebrating the Lord’s Supper, we had a fellowship lunch, which was a wonderful opportunity to get to know the church family and learn about the church’s local context. That afternoon, we spent some time as a team exploring Dublin city centre and St Stephen’s Green before returning to Cormac’s home for dinner and some evangelism training.

Each morning, from Monday through Friday, we began with devotions from Acts 20:17-38, themed around ‘How to lead the church for gospel advance’. These opened into extensive discussions each day around that topic. This was followed by training from Cormac on ‘Applied Baptist Ecclesiology for Post-Catholic Ireland’, leading a multi-ethnic church, and how to deal with disappointment in evangelism. Kenny (one of the other church leaders) did a session on ‘Missional Living’ on Thursday, offering a transformative view of individual responsibility in sharing the gospel.

Each afternoon, we engaged in door-to-door evangelism for a few hours. We did various areas (including Cabra, Ashtown, Phibsboro, Drumcondra, Glasnevin, and Stoneybatter) and faced varying responses. Using four survey questions (ranging from the person’s view of spirituality to the state of the church in Ireland), we found many people willing to chat, with some conversations even opening into gospel opportunities. Many were closed to even the idea of talking about religion, yet even in some hard areas, we found some true Christians seeking a church family.

Each evening, we enjoyed dinner with various families from the church, sharing fellowship, stories and experiences. Tuesday evening involved two home groups where we discussed the passage from Sunday, diving into applicatory discussions on how we could live it out. On Thursday evening, we had an encouraging time at an evangelistic event in Hedigan’s Bar, when 15 men showed up for a talk on ‘What Jesus says about being a man’. Originally supposed to be in a room upstairs, we were providentially relocated to a conservatory at the back, where Cormac spoke of man’s brokenness, his abdication of responsibility and inability to solve his problem – stemming from sin and man’s need for a Saviour. This led to group discussions for the next hour, with some great societal, philosophical, and ultimately gospel conversations.

On Friday morning, our final day, Andrew Burke (a fellow first-year student) joined us to enjoy breakfast in a local café. With Cormac and Kenny, we discussed the week’s work and evangelism tactics before spending time looking at Paul’s final words to the Ephesian elders. The church reported many visitors this past Sunday – almost double the usual Sunday number. This, paired with Cormac’s report of ‘confidence in the gospel throughout the church', makes for deep encouragement after a busy and blessed week.