Battle Log
Sunday 5 April 2026
Posted 5 April 2026, 1:50 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink
Last month I wrote about a multi-’coincidental’ encounter with a man during our week of outreach in Dunedin. Well, I have a follow up report. He found me on Facebook and sent a friend request. I initially deleted it, but then I suddenly realised who it was, so I sent him a friend request, which he accepted. He messaged me, and we have been able to continue the gospel conversation, mainly focusing correctly interpreting various passages of scripture. When doing street evangelism, you don’t often get to do a lot of follow up, so this has been nice! God is good!
I haven’t done an A&P show for a while now, but it’s been so encouraging knowing others are picking up the slack. Daniel led an outreach to the Mayfield A&P Show this month. Mike & Sam joined him. Good work guys! Also, Brian and Laura have been leading outreaches to various A&P shows in the area – at least 3 in recent times. Great stuff!
It’s been such a joy reviewing the photos I took this month. Some of them bring back good memories of gospel encounters. I’m not going to have the time to talk about them all. And I’ve probably forgotten some really good ones.
I was down at the corner of Colombo and Cashel one Friday afternoon. I was with John when 2 kids, on Lime scooters, came up to me and stopped. One of them said, “Hi Glen, how are you?” When he saw my look of unrecognition on my face he said, “My name is Charlie, you talked to me a few years ago in Riccarton”. That was super encouraging to have him remember my name after all that time! But I checked, “so, if you’ve talked to me, can you remember why you can go to heaven when you die?” He thought about it for a few moments before saying, “Because Jesus died on the cross” - good answer. And so I followed up, “do you believe that?”. And then his defenses slowly started to rise, he said, “Well, I’m not sure if it’s real”. From there, we went into a discussion about how we know it’s real and why we reject it: ultimately out of a love of sin! Sadly, at the moment, Charlie and his friend are rejecting Jesus at the moment. I challenged him on the urgency, he may not get another 2 years to consider, he needs to accept the gospel now.
On a Tuesday, in Riccarton, I was pounding the streets handing out tracts and striking up conversations when a group of high school age kids passed. I usually don’t have the energy to take on a large group (there were at least 10 of them), but I ended up in multiple conversations with them on the street corner. Some of them were trying to shock me by how bad they were, some were mocking, but some were listening. You know you’ve got their attention when the hard questions come out. One kid in particular was doing that. It’s pretty hard to hold multiple conversations all at the same time, but I somehow managed it - I’m not sure how effective my words were, but these kids were engaged enough to sit down and listen to the few snippets of gospel that was coming their way. I was very encouraged. During the conversations, tracts were handed out to most, if not all, those kids. Sadly, as they left, I noticed a spread of finely ripped tract on the pavement. I picked it all up and put it in the bin, but I rejoice, because even if one discarded the good news, maybe another will keep it, and one day read it. The gospel is the power of God for salvation.
So many other wonderful opportunities over the month. The last one I’ll mention was from last Tuesday. Three young lads came past, they all went to different local churches, yet they weren’t clear on the gospel. It was a fairly short chat, but a wonderful one, because you could see these kids really processing the gospel in a fresh way. I challenged them to read John, Acts and Romans - don’t trust what a crazy old man, with a grey beard is saying, go to the primary source - your soul is at stake! It turns out these kids were friends with Andy’s son! It’s a small world; you just don’t know what God will do with your feeble efforts; step out in faith and talk to someone about Jesus today. All glory to God alone!
View previous Christchurch (NZ) report (1 March 2026)
Christchurch (NZ) Team
Weekly outreaches:
Tue 3:30pm - 5:30pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St)
Fri 1:30pm - 3:30pm - City (Bridge of Remembrance)
Sat 12:30pm - 2:30pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St)
Sun 1:30pm - 3:30pm - City (corner of Colombo St and Cashel St) - only 2nd, 4th and 5th Sundays of the month.
Contact Glen Richards or Andy Barlow for more information.