[b]A Wonderful Time At Stephen F. Austin University[/b]
Feb 11, 13-15 Saturday, Monday -Wednesday, the open air team, (Jeff, Miles, and myself) preached on the S.F.U. campus. We started preaching last week, but were shut down and told we needed a permit for this campus. Everyone campus is different, and so your best bet is just to preach and see what happens. If they dont allow preaching, at least you got a little in. If they require a permit, they will come and let you know. If they allow free speech anywhere on their public campus, they will let you keep preaching.
So once we received our permit we checked out the free speech area. It was a big wooded area, that didnt look like it would get much traffic, and it was right next to noisy construction. But on Monday we gave it our best and God blessed our labors.
Though all the traffic of walking students was across the street from where we preached, enough students became curious and interested enough to walk across the street. All three days of ministering Gods Word we had crowds of 25-30 people, which might not be too impressive, compared to some campuses, but because of the location of the area they gave it, it was great.
Some days we preached for 4 hours, others possibly up to 5 hours. The first two days were rough with very vicious crowds, but the third day it was very calm and civil and we answered questions/objections and straight preached salvation.
One college professor, which you can see in our photo gallery, came out and talked to us. He said he was a Christian and even lifted up a prayer for our meeting there in front of the students. He then talked to his communications class for 50 minutes about what we were doing.
There was a division between professing Christians about us. Some hated us and would cuss us out, though they said they were worship leaders and leaders of Christian organizations on campus. Other Christians greatly loved what we were doing and rejoiced! A number of students all invited us to a local Church were we went and had wonderful fellowship, and were well received.
One student, the vise president of a student organization and writer for the student paper, sponsored us for Wednesday so we could preach in the center of campus were we tried the first day. But his organization has already gone through hardship with the administration and the students because they witness using the Law, so the President vetoed the sponsorship to avoid further controversy.
[b]Here is an encouraging email from one of the students on campus:[/b]
Quote:
Jesse,
It does me great pleasure to send this correspondence to both you, and our brothers in Christ, Miles and Jeff. I can not tell you the esteem I hold for not only yourself and your associates, but your ministry as a whole. There genuinely exists not a more critical place to spread the gospel than my own academic home of Stephen F. Austin State University. It truly meant a lot that you chose Nacogdoches as part of your crusade for Christ.
Deepest Personal Regards,
Daniel
P.S.--- God Bless: Jesus Saves
The entire campus was in a buzz about what we were doing and the gospel. The campus paper, The Pine Log, even mentioned us briefly in a recent article on free speech.
[b]Here is our brief mention in the campus paper: [/b]
Quote:
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Many SFA students have dealt with the issue of free speech this week, as a group of evangelists called Open Air Outreach inhabited the wooded area on campus. By the way, as of four years ago, the official name of the free speech area is the wooded area.
Great [b]video[/b] and [b]audio[/b] will be available soon. You can see a [i]slideshow[/i] of the [b]pictures[/b] of the meetings at Stephen F. Austin at: [url=http://www.openairoutreach.com/gallery/slideshow.php?set_albumName=SFA]SlideShow of Open Air Meetings[/url] |