Fran Kennach is part of Agora Church where she helps coordinate a growing team of people in sharing the gospel on the streets of Hamilton. She shares her heart for seeing people know and understand the gospel.
“I was Catholic all my life but didn’t know the gospel until twenty months ago at age 43. I started reading the Bible and learned the true gospel and it changed my life, I found Agora Church through the CCCNZ website as I was looking for a Protestant church.
“The gospel has changed my life so I’ve got a passion for sharing it with others. One thing that has surprised me about sharing the gospel with others is that so many people haven’t actually heard the gospel at all. They may have heard some things about God but don’t know how to follow him or have a living relationship with him. They don’t know about what Jesus has done and how to respond.
“Attending The Send event really impacted me (The Send is a campaign activating Christians to live a missional lifestyle by adopting and reaching real mission fields at home and abroad). I initially thought ‘missions and outreach is for young people’, but God really opened up the way for me with street evangelism.
“We started off, just two women from Agora Church—myself and Tanya Botha. I had done some training through NeedGod.net and had been sharing the gospel through online evangelism, where we’d be connected with a stranger via an online chat app and have an opportunity to chat and share. I found online evangelism was less daunting and it gave me the confidence to start sharing the gospel.
“Then I did some training with Operation 513 down in Christchurch and saw how to use a flip chart—the ‘are you a good person’ test. I came back to Hamilton and started using a flip chart, it has graphics to help you share the gospel. Now, we have a group of five people from church joining the outreach handing out gospel tracts, striking up conversations and praying at our Hamilton street outreaches. Agora Church has been so supportive with the wider church providing prayer support and encouragement as well as an additional flipchart. One thing that has been cool is to see people from church who’ve been in overseas mission previously keen to head out into Hamilton to share the gospel there.”
Tanya Botha says she has been really blessed by the opportunities to share her faith:
“I can honestly say I am surprised (and humbled) each time at the number of people who wish to hear the good news, and who genuinely understand it when we share.
“One Saturday I spoke to a gentleman who had a clear awe of the Lord, and understood that he, like all of us, had sinned, but yet he was very burdened. As we went through the conversation, he eventually said that he was Mormon, which opened the door for us to talk about the fact that the Bible conflicts with what he has been taught about salvation—that the Bible says we are actually saved by faith alone, through grace alone, and by Christ's sacrifice alone.
“Once he understood that Jesus took 100% of his punishment and that there was 0% left for him, and it was a free gift instead of our own works, his countenance lifted and he seemed like a new man. He said our conversation had lifted a heavy burden off him, because he felt like he had been pushing up against a brick wall for years.
“Praise be to God, who is the only saviour that asks us not to give, but to receive, the only God that seeks no sacrifice but sacrificed everything himself, and the only king who comes to our door to share a meal, but gives us the seat of honour.
Fran says the team has found it helpful to be consistent with the commitment to head out, “a consistent routine has helped us, especially when haven’t really ‘felt’ like it, we find that we never regret heading out, God always has people that he sends to us.”
She encourages that sharing the gospel is not about being an expert or an extrovert, “I know it is all through God that I am able to do this work as I’m actually quite an introverted person when it comes to talking with people.
“Going out together with another person and having support from others at the church through prayer really helped give me confidence. Then, my biggest piece of advice is just go and do it, the more you head out the more you grow in confidence. Go along with someone who is more confident, buddy up with someone, and learn together.
“Being a new Christian, I tend to communicate without lots of Christian jargon which has been helpful I think. I’ve been trying to debrief with others in the group to improve my approach and there are a lot of resources online. Some in our outreach team are a lot older and have spent time in cross-cultural ministry, it has been so good to learn from them and to see that different people in our team have different ways of connecting.”
The team has been encouraged by how much people want to talk with them and are keen to approach them to look through the good person test or just to chat about spiritual things, Fran says that Jesus’ words to his disciples ring true for her, ‘the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few’.
