When I say fellowship, I am talking about a time centered on Christ. It is a time when brothers in the Lord edify, encourage, and strengthen each other, building a relationship with one another. They individually use their life to speak into the others’ lives. By life I mean their walk with Christ and how he is forming them into his image. Within fellowship this life of Christ is passed by the spirit of the living God from brother to brother. It is not by preaching or teaching but by a love that flows out of one life into another. Truth, love, wisdom, and knowledge are communicated by the spirit in ways that cannot be done without fellowship with one another. Street preachers are like minded and understand the ministry that God has called them to. They understand walking in holiness, and being led by the spirit of God each day. This is communicated in ways not experienced in church or even on the streets preaching. All of this is imparted even when we do not realize it. God has a much deeper way to impart truth: through fellowship with the brethren. By seeing who they are and how they really live their lives. Words are spoken while communicating that where perfect for the moment, and the Holy Spirit gives revelation through the discussion between the brothers. It is spontaneous and it only happens in fellowship. I love when this happens because the Lord gives insight, brings true conviction and makes the relationship between the brothers grow closer. True love is shared through the Holy Spirit during the fellowship. There was unity, trust and love built between the brothers. There is no planned sermon, teaching or agenda during fellowship. Brothers are just hanging out around the cross and Christ gives the wisdom, truth, understanding, discernment, love, mercy, kindness, or whatever is needed for that moment to build the brothers together in life. It happens supernaturally. It is hard to express. There is spiritual knowledge given by Christ and the brothers become united in love for one another. This is what I love the most about street preaching with the brethren, the growing together in the spirit. It is completely spiritual and you may not know when it is happening during fellowship. You leave after spending a week with the brothers in fellowship while preaching and your spirit is refreshed and you feel a change within you. You love Jesus more, you want to read the word more, you want to memorize the Scriptures more, and you want to walk closer to Christ because of what you experienced and took away from the fellowship with the other brothers. You have been changed by the Spirit of the living God and it happened in fellowship. Spiritual things take place in your life through the life of another. Sometimes you know it right then and sometimes realization comes later, but I know for sure that this takes place through the Holy Spirit during fellowship. You can learn a lot about each other during fellowship, whether at church or even over dinner. Every Christian is at a different level in their walk with Christ. I love to be around life, around a real man of God who carries the life of Christ. It flows out of him and leaves an impact on whoever comes into contact with him. I hope that you will not go to a street preach and talk only to your best friend that just so happens to be their preaching too, and avoid speaking to brothers you haven’t met before. Older brothers that are called to preach and are more experienced in the ministry should share their knowledge and their life with the younger men who have been called to do this work. It makes me sad to see the older preachers keep to themselves and only those who they are comfortable going out preaching with. The young preachers are the ones who need the fellowship. They need to be built up, strengthened, and encouraged by those who the Lord has blessed with years worth of wisdom and experience in this calling. I pray that street preaching does not become like the modern church where you can hardly fellowship with the pastor because he is too busy among his peers. Fellowship is the only way we can impart life, true life, a spirit filled life, when just being you can change a life.
Kevin on the opposition in the church
The first thing you have to understand about Preaching, is that there is a lack of knowledge in the body about the calling on your life. Even though my life is not your own, and I can't sit here and tell you what to do, I can tell you about my life. I can impart something into you by talking about how it's hard to be a preacher. It's painful and will cost you a lot.
I got saved in 1981. I was just a normal guy walking down the street and i got saved. I started going out on the street corner and talking to people - now i call that preaching. I think we all preach. We are all called to preach, we are a nation of preachers and whether it is you preaching in the Check Out line or preaching through making cookies, you are extolling the virtue and greatness of our God. Then i started taking my guitar on the street and playing. And finally, I started raising my voice to talk to the multitudes at the same time. There are a million ways to a Preach the gospel, the good news, and this is the one I'm called to do. I’ve been doing it for almost thirty years and I'll tell you, it's a long hard road and the enemy wants you to fail and turn back. But that is why I'm writing this - it's for the body, that you might be strengthened.
So the first thing that happens is that you go out on the street corner and you someone sees you. And they are troubled because at the event that you are preaching at is the event that they are attending. You are standing there raising your voice talking about Jesus. So what they do? They go back to the pastor and tell the pastor, I heard Kevin on the street corner, did you know he was doing that? Is that biblical? Then after a few months you will get called into a meeting and asked about your preaching all nice. Then they will probably talk about it behind closed doors. Meanwhile, you are continuing to preach, stirring up more of the congregations, because you aren't just talking about it on the street anymore. You are bringing it into the church and telling everyone about what God has been doing in your life. And some are coming with you. And the leadership sees it and they don't like it because they are losing control and if there is one thing that a pastor doesn't like it is losing control, control of his flock. And he's been watching you. So he will probably invite you over to his house, you and your wife. Now, the women of the church have been talking to you wife and telling her all their thoughts about your preaching and she has been bringing it home to you asking if you are really called. The enemy has been sowing discord and doubts and raised up people amongst the flock to tear you down. And now, finally, there is a division. You are asked to stop, to not mention the name of the church, because it's just too raw. You are asked, kindly to leave. Maybe your closest friends have distanced themselves, and your wife doesn't understand. The pastor is against you, the congregation is divided. And now you have a choice.
So there is one question, are you called?
Proverbs 25:11 - A word fitly spoken, [is like] apples of gold in pictures of silver.
My desire is to Glorify Christ, to display the power of God through the preaching of the Gospel – the cross. I want my words to be fitly spoken. As one who uses words to describe sin, I use descriptive language to identify specific sinful behavior and magnify the sin of the particular people group I am preaching to. I want to utilize every word the Spirit of God brings to me as I preach with the intent to arrest the heart of the hearers and for them to see their need for forgiveness.
The words that I use have no malice, no hatred, and no malicious intent in them; every word I speak has the motive (as much as I understand my own motives) for the highest good of my listeners, even though sometimes at that moment it sounds like a hard word.
Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul all spoke hard words to describe the heart of man. They did not use words in general terms such as “us”, “all,” or “we”, they used words that were specific to the hearers and directed those words to them.
Jesus said in John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil…”
Paul talking to Elymas the sorcerer says in Acts 13:10 “you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to pervert the straight ways of the Lord?”
John the Baptist speaking to the Pharisees and Sadducees said in Matt 3:7 “Brood of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
There are many examples in the Bible where specific words are used to describe behavior such as fornication, adultery, sodomy or the characteristics of the human nature of man such as sinfulness, wickedness, evil and foolishness. This is not name calling, it is the way God identifies sin behavior and magnifies how bad it is. Words are powerful and when I preach I want to use every word that the Holy Spirit brings to me in the most effective way possible, for them to be fitly spoken!. My aim in preaching is to be direct. To use simple and direct language for the hearer to have no excuses for not understanding what sin is and how exceedingly sinful the offence is against infinite God.
This type of preaching might be identified as confrontational evangelism, because the preacher is direct and to the point, being specific and describing the sin that humans are practicing or participating in. When I preach I do not preach in general terms or use vocabulary not relative to the event or the situation. Preaching that is aimed to the hearer is personal in nature and the individual who hears it and is convicted by it will respond in a confrontational way. He might get angry and defend himself or tell me I am judging him because of the personal nature of my preaching. This approach might appear to be unproductive and might be viewed as if it is turning people off from Christianity. In the natural I would agree, but in the Spiritual realm, it is evident that the Holy Spirit is troubling the mind of the unbeliever.
This is what happens when the Holy Spirit convicts men of sin, righteousness and judgment to come. There is a response. Conviction demands response weather good or bad. Any response brings joy to my heart and I get a big smile on my face, because I witness the Holy Spirit is speaking to the individual, he is convicted and is responding.
Jesus tells us that the response will be negative John 15:18, 19 “If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
True messengers will not have people saying great things about them. Jesus told us in Luke 6:26 “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets.” When I preach I am not trying to get sinners to like me so they will come to my church. I am trying to communicate the heart of God toward the lifestyle they live in.
Jesus said in John 15:20 “Remember the word that I said unto you; the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.”
If they keep God’s word they will keep ours as preachers. But if they hate God’s word they will hate preachers and persecute them. It will cause them to hate the preacher and want to kill him as they tried to do to Paul in Act 14:19 And there came thither [certain] Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew [him] out of the city, supposing he had been dead.
I am not saying that I am the best messenger. My vocabulary is small; my words are few and simple. Most people would say I am unqualified to speak for the King of Kings as His ambassador. I would agree, I am nothing, I can do nothing, and I have nothing to give to Him who sits on the throne of the universe. I stand in fear and in much trembling inside my heart desiring to do my best in faith that the Holy Spirit would speak His words through me. That is my prayer every time I stand to speak for Christ. My heart is moved by the Holy Spirit to go and display the love of Christ in both His goodness and His severity. Faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of God. May the Holy Spirit give me words that are fitly spoken to describe sin, so sinners would see their need for forgiveness, and repent and believe in the Gospel. Written by Kevin Farrer (end of article)
All Scripture is from the King James Version and is used by permission.
Who is the man who will boast in the Lord God Almighty? What moves the man who speaks for the Lord God Almighty? How do we know you are the man? The man is the message. The man is the mediator God uses to reach His people. The man is the vessel that God uses to perform His will. The man is the heart of the message. You cannot separate the man from the message. The man is the one who has experienced the power of the message. The man is the living message of Gods grace and truth. The man cannot give the message unless that message is living in Him. The man cannot give the truth unless the truth is living in Him to be a truth teller, you must be a truth lover; a truth lover is a lover of Christ. Christ said I AM the truth, Truth is a person; Christ is truth. Christ glorifies Himself in the man. The man, the truth teller, a truth lover, a lover of Christ is being changed from glory to glory. 2 Cor. 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [even] as by the Spirit of the Lord. You are the epistle written on the heart known and read by all men. 2 Cor. 3:2, 3 ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men; the man is the message.
The street preacher is the message living, moving through him, and changing him. It is a living message, in a living relationship with a living God who is living in you and through you for His glory. You cannot separate the message from the man Just as you cannot separate the sin from the sinner they are one, it is the sinful nature that makes him sin. Christians have a new nature. Christians have been born again, they are born from above. Christians are new creatures in Christ. 2 Cor. 5:17 wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. The life they now live is by the power of Christ. 2 Peter 1:2-4 the man is the message. The life of the messenger is the Spirit of the living God flowing through him. The life of the preaching lies in him, his zeal, and his passion that burns within him. The man has a vivacity that people come to watch him burn, he is on fire for the Lord. I have been delivered out of the kingdom of darkness and transformed into the kingdom of the love of His son. I have a living testimony of the power of Christ in my life that changes me from day to day. I boast in that. I magnify the power of Christ in my life. Look what Christ has done in my life. I lift up my voice on the street Conner and cry out look what Christ has done. I proclaim Christ in my life; I preach the power through my life. I live in that power from moment to moment.
Preaching is an overflow of my life. I am a truth teller, a truth lover, a lover of Christ wherever I go. I am a Christian; I am madly in love with Christ. How are you going to shut my life up? You will have to kill me. The man, the truth teller has nothing to tell if the message he is preaching is not living in him. Power and authority comes from how you behave, not in what you believe. Some preacher believe if you just sow the word, preach the word, it will accomplish the purpose weather you are living it or not. Sinners know when a person is real or not real. Demons know what a man dose in secret. Power and authority comes from a life giving message. You are just the trophy of His grace. I cry out on the streets Look at what Christ has done, look at what He is doing, and look at what he will do. When you do Gods will His truth comes alive. Christ comes alive in you and through you. When I minister on the street I am more ministered to then the people I am preaching to. The zeal of the Lord consumes me.
The mind of Christ reveals to me truth of the intimacy of loving Christ. He demonstrates His power in me, to me, through me, in a supernatural way. The Spirit of the living God exalts Christ in me. Christ is above all, Christ is supreme, Christ is the center, and Christ is superior over all. The Holy Spirit magnifies the wonders of Christ to me and I leave changed from beholding Him. No one knows that is happening in my life as I am preaching. It is living word given from a living life by the Spirit of the living God. The man is the message everything surrounds the man. The man is the bride of Christ. The man is the body of Christ.
The man is the ambassador for Christ the man is the minister for Christ 2 Cor. 5:18-20 and all things [are] of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech [you] by us: we pray [you] in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. The man is the vehicle who God speaks through. God is concerned about the man before his ministry or message. I have come looking for that man. Written by Kevin Farrer (end of article)
