Hampton Beach Evangelism – What You Need to Know!
Hampton Beach is a GREAT place to put into practice reaching out to the lost with compassion, urgency and love.
The town of Hampton has a fireworks show most Wednesday nights in the summer, so lots of people gather for that. The fireworks start at 9:30PM, and that gives a good two+ hours (7-9:30PM) of ministry time.
People tend to be friendly and open, though there are sometimes exceptions.
2018 Schedule
Here are the Wednesday nights, Lord willing, I will be there:
I am planning on adding other dates for days of the week other than Wednesdays. Please stay tuned for that!
- June 13
- June 16 (This is a Saturday)
- June 20
- June 27
- July 11 (Eric Briscoe and Chris McKinley leading while I’m away)
- July 18
- July 25 (Chris McKinley leading while I’m away)
- August 1
- August 8
- August 15 (Eric Briscoe and Chris McKinley leading while I’m away)
- August 22
- August 29
This schedule is subject to change, so check back at this page for the updated schedule, or contact me.
Your Job:
Whatever you’re comfortable with! You can watch. You can pray silently. You can hand out gospel tracts. You might even start up a Gospel conversation!
And I need at least one person to help me with the equipment to and from my car and to watch the equipment should one of us need to use the restrooms.
Where:
226 Ocean Blvd, Hampton, NH
To see the location on Google Maps, click here: https://goo.gl/maps/S74HJGqSTKJ2
Give yourself plenty of extra time for parking!!!
Directions:
Here's the "Bandstand" you'll drive past. You're ALMOST there!!!
- Drive 101 East all the way to the beach.
- Turn Right onto Route 1A/Ocean Blvd.
(The idea now is to turn around on Ocean BLVD to go North.)
- One way is to turn Left on D Street and then Left on Ocean BLVD, but there are many streets you can turn left onto to turn left onto Ocean BLVD.
- Once driving North on Ocean BLVD, drive past bandstand on the right. There might be a band playing there.
- I setup right across the street from the “JB’s Seafood” Restaurant. If you see JB’s on your left, then look to your right because I’ll be there. I setup my sketch board on the sidewalk on the right side so my back is facing the ocean and I’m looking at the Seafood restaurant.
Parking:
This is the spot where we setup!
It is $2/hour to park on the street, but very hard to find spots. Parking on the streets is by credit card only.
Perhaps the best place to park is the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom for a $10 flat fee (cash only).
There is plenty of parking there and it’s very close to where we meet!
The address is:
169 Ocean Blvd, Hampton, NH.
(https://goo.gl/maps/sX6XH)
What Mark Will Do:
Since this is a spot where there are lots of people walking by, Open Air Campaigners has found it very effective over the years to use our paint board to draw a crowd to listen to a gospel message.
Also effective is when we put up a riddle on the board and wait for people to stop and try to solve the riddle. We walk them through the riddle, and at the end it leads well into God’s plan of salvation.
As you can see, a large crowd often gathers to listen.
What You Do:
It's not uncommon for many great one-on-one conversations to happen after the preaching!
Whatever you think God is asking you to do. If you just want to pray silently, that’s great! Your prayers are needed and watching will encourage you!
The first step would be to hand out gospel tracts. It’s that easy. Just pass them out with a smile as people walk by. You’ll get rejections, but you’ll get A LOT of people to take them and even thank you! If you’re not sure about gospel tracts, please read this post I made about them here: http://luke-15.org/tracts/
Okay, so you gave out gospel tracts and didn’t die. So let’s go for the next step. You listen to the Open Air Preaching, and when it’s done, you say to the stranger next to you in the crowd, “Hi, I’m with him (the guy speaking.) What did you think about what he had to say? What do you think happens when you die?” And then you’re off on a Divinely-appointed Christ-centered conversation, where Jesus Himself is using you as an Ambassador for Jesus Christ!
If you want to ask people about the riddle and share the Gospel of Christ, that’s great too. No pressure. But you will be blessed to be there and you’ll be a blessing to the team too.
Be open to what the Holy Spirit can accomplish through you. I’ve seen a number of people who thought they’d never initiate a conversation with a stranger end up sharing Christ eloquently and lovingly once they saw the people!
What To Avoid:
- A crowd attracts a crowd, but too large a crowd gets you in trouble with the police, so let’s not all crowd too close to the sketch board. We should spread out to allow plenty of room for pedestrians to pass along, and allow room for non-Christians to get close to the board so they can listen to the preaching, or try to solve the riddle.
- Avoid giving out gospel tracts to people walking towards the preaching (because they’ll read the tracts instead of listening to the Word.) But please DO give tracts to those leaving or to anyone when no preaching is happening.
- Please avoid wearing overtly Christian t-shirts. It’ll look like an invasion if there are a ton of people around wearing Christian shirts!!! The idea is to blend in and look like everyone else.
Note: There are fireworks afterwards, so you can plan to stay to watch them if you’d like. OAC jokes that the town of Hampton is so happy that we’re out sharing the Gospel of Christ that they put on a fireworks show for us every Wednesday night to help us draw a crowd! 🙂
And please pray pray pray leading up to the outreach!!!
Want Some Encouragement???
I’m REALLY excited about Beach Evangelism because God has opened up this fantastic Mission Field at the beach and God will use us to reach the lost!
Jesus said that His mission was “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). What an honor for us to be a part of that!!!
To be encouraged by how God has used this tremendous Mission Field in the recent past, please check out some blog posts about Beach Evangelism at: http://luke-15.org/category/beach/.
Any questions? Feel free to contact me!
Finally, if you would like a PDF file that you can download, print, or email to others, that contains most of this info, you can find that at: http://Luke-15.org/Hampton_Beach_Evangelism.pdf.
I love your outreach! I would be willing to do similar in my area! I will pray for you and maybe we will show up on the 16th on our way home from Connecticut to see Joni Earickson Tada. It would be out of our way but I feel like I should make the effort! Or maybe a Wednesday after school is out.