Open Air Evangelism ... Not Quite!

The ferry across to the Freetown peninsula in Sierra Leone was an interesting experience. As we sat waiting for the boat to depart a wide variety of people started to come round selling things. From biscuits, to sweets, to DVDs, to just about anything they could carry and offer!

Then some people assembled with a big speaker and a guy stepped forward with a loud-hailer. He announced something in the local language, but we quickly worked out that he was calling on the passengers to pray with him (for the boat to get across the water safely, we wondered!). Interestingly Christian and Muslim travellers alike joined in what we recognised as the Lord's prayer.

I thought "Fantastic, we are going to have an open air service and preaching right here on the boat!", and listened intently to see how it was going to pan out.

Yet the announcer seemed to then go into a long spiel, which became punctuated by him holding up different medicine type products. His accomplices started to fan out among the passengers offering these for sale (just like the biscuit sellers and the like). It dawned on me that the whole thing was a sales exercise for over-the-counter medicines, creams and lotions (including some stuff that we looked as if it belonged at the more exotic end of the market).

So we had a curious scenario of 'spiritualised' medicine selling. I never worked out why they did it this way. Perhaps the sales-people felt it gave them credibility - to start in the spiritual and then go on to their worldly medicines. Of course for us Westerners we often do it the other way round: start with medicine and then call on God later.

It also made me think about how we do our evangelism. Though we might not want to admit it, but is our style to start with the spiritual yet in reality we are then effectively trying to 'sell' some kind of pre-prepared package?

I was disappointed that it wasn't a true open-air preaching occasion, which would have been great. But it was educational, making me thing how in an open air event we would truly encourage people to look heavenward, rather than in subtle ways be actually more like these people from the drugs company.