How We Evangelized During Pride Month

I learned a lot so far this “pride” month. Especially in the last few days.

For the most part, we have been evangelizing as normal, going door to door and occasionally standing on the street corner where 11 million people per year pass by with Jesus signs.

We have been handing our “Thank You” tracts to cashiers, servers, and others, wearing clothes with messages of salvation on them, leaving tracts here and there around town, through online discussions with non-believers, and through online “drop and run” posts.

Then came this last week. It was posted all over local Facebook pages. A “pride” event was coming to our small conservative mountain town that some are set on “queering”.

After seeing many of the “celebrations” around the country that have been disgusting, probably illegal, and definitely immoral and in Mark 9:42 territory, I was questioning if we should evangelize at this event.

God put on my heart that I must go to this event, and if I have learned anything over my last 25 plus years as a Christian, if God tells you something, you gotta do it. No questions asked.

As if I needed any further confirmation of the need to go to this event the videos started coming out of more “pride” events from around the country.

Participants in New York chanting, “We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming For Your Children.”

Fully naked men exposing themselves to children at the Seattle “pride” event.

News like this coming in from around the country, even this one: Sexually explicit Pride performances shown to kids in Arlington, TX.

These events, as well as God's confirmation, dictated how we evangelized during pride month.

On Halloween night many Christians will shut down and have nothing to do with it. We have been to our town’s Trunk or Treat festival now for six years and have given out thousands of Christian materials to both parents and children on a night that many Christians are content to let the enemy have.

A quick note on Halloween (which is slightly off topic). It is a night that people will take things from you (a tract or anything with the Gospel) unlike any other night of the year.

A recent article in the Chick Tract monthly newsletter mentioned something that really got me thinking.

It mentioned that many times fellow Christians will tell you give it a rest, not here, or not there or have nothing to do with Halloween.

It went on to say you know what, satan never, ever “gives it a rest” or says not here or not there. Satan is ALWAYS on the prowl. You know what? Neither should we ever “give it a rest.” The enemy NEVER rests. Neither should we.

So after a fairly uneventful “pride” month, we headed out to the local “pride” event.

We had two goals (really three) to accomplish. One we at the very least wanted to get some Gospel information into as many hands as possible before anything happened.

We had this completed within five minutes of arriving. We used the Chick tracts titled A Love Story and walked through the crowd of about 50-60. Handing them out or placing them on the tables they were sitting at and telling them welcome to our little town. We also handed out about a dozen of our Gospels of John with Commentary

That got us on the radar of the organizer and others pretty quickly. Which actually helped us carry out our second goal of getting into some conversations.

Now, I have never been to an event like this, so I really did not know what to expect. I really didn’t. I did not know if we would end up in jail or in the hospital.

Neither of these happened. The organizer came quickly and spoke with us. She was a genuinely nice lady, who took the time to speak with us in a very kindly manner.

She sincerely invited us to have a booth at the event next year. Which actually reminded me of this post from Facebook.

She told us as long as we are respectful, we are welcome. This gave me the opportunity to give her one of our Gospels of John and ask her if she could read it and let me know if it would be respectful enough, to which she agreed.

So not only did we get her to take a Gospel of John, but we also got her to agree to read it. Seeds planted everywhere so far.

Next another lady approached me and engaged me in conversation. All of this happening while the transvestites are performing (thankfully nothing too crude or revealing but still pretty creepy to be with a few feet of).

This lady started out not too happy about what we were doing, but after a few minutes of conversation her alarm was diffused.

She was a lesbian who had grown up in the Bible belt and had been hurt by Christians in her life. You could see the anguish in her eyes.

I tried my best to apologize for Christians that do not represent Christ very well. No, he would not tolerate the sin, but He would love the sinner.

We all remember John 8:11. He did not condemn the woman caught in adultery (grace) but He did tell her to “go and sin no more” (truth).

We all need both grace and truth in our lives. Our Christian walk is not complete without both.

Grace without truth gives us a sinful church that will do anything it pleases and cheapens Christ’s death by every sin they commit.

Truth without grace gives us what the young lady I was speaking with experienced and hurt her so much. We talked for about 20 minutes and during that entire time I could see the hurt in her eyes.

I did not change her mind about Christ yesterday, but I hope I represented Him as He would have wanted me to.

I did not and do not approve of anything about the lifestyle that was represented at this event just like I would not approve of the lifestyle of those attending an adulterer convention.

We need to remember what Romans 3:23 tells us. We are all sinners. And then we need to remember what James 2:10 tells us. That once we have broken one part of God’s Law, we are guilty of breaking all of it.

As I am writing this and thinking back, I hoped I would have given her a copy of Mark Cahill’s One Heartbeat Away, but as this was our first year doing this event, I did not even think to bring copies.

Maybe next year.

Unfortunately, this lady’s experience with Christians is not an exception. My very own brother had an extremely hard time with Christianity because of the way Christians behaved. He eventually accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, but how many don’t get that chance to after rejecting Him.

Our third goal was to at least make a presence at this event. To let them know that we are Christians. We will not cause trouble, but we will be sharing the Good News to everyone everywhere.

To let the enemy know, we will not be resting as he would want us to. Mission Accomplished on this one also.

Overall, how we evangelized during pride month was not very different than usual until this event. I gotta tell you, it was eye opening to say the least.

My take aways from evangelizing at this event are that we need both truth and grace not only in our walk with Jesus Christ, but while sharing Him with others.

One other thing I forgot to mention is, we forgot to pray before going out among this group. It was an oversight that could have had grave consequences.

We will never know how things would have been different if we did pray beforehand. We must always remember to pray before evangelism of any kind.

So next year, and hopefully throughout the year, we will do what Jesus did and sit with sinners, not to be tolerant, but to call them to repentance.