Battle Log

Sunday 16 August 2026

Posted by Posted 16 August 2026, 5:23 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink

It was nice having a week off!  But also good to get back to it this week.  There were 3 street outreaches this week:  Roger, Graeme, and Sam were out on Tuesday in Riccarton.  Andy, Sam, and I were in Riccarton on Thursday.  And Roger, Andy, and I were in the City on Friday.

 

It was a busy outreach on Thursday.  Sam and I ran a flipchart while Andy was mobile.  One standout chat was with a young man from Africa with a Christian background.  He had to get going, but he was able to stay long enough to hear a brief gospel presentation.  He was very encouraged by the way we were doing evangelism.  But later in the outreach, he came back.  He had had a job interview, but now that that was done, he wanted to have a proper chat with us.  I was able to slow down and bring precision to the presentation. When I got to the ‘sin again’ check, he gently resisted and quoted Romans 6 in response.  This was great, because we now had a chance to really wrestle with this biblical tension: we are saved by grace, for good works (and not by good works).  He let me explain the ‘sin again’ check (Jesus pays for our future sins), and then, to balance it, I gave him the fireman analogy (out of love for Jesus, we don’t want to commit future sins).  And then we stood back and considered both sides of the tension in harmony.  We considered Ephesians 2:8-10 and Romans 1 to 6 in this conversation.  He even pulled out his phone to write the passages down so he could “check it with the Bible” for himself later.

 

After working through all the checks, I challenged him: “Before this chat, why exactly did you think you’d go to heaven when you die?”  He had to admit that he was partly trusting his works, and so I challenged him to change his mind and to search the Scriptures till God gave him an assurance of his salvation.  It was such a great chat!

 

Another standout chat from that outreach was with a tall young man.  At the start of our conversation, it was clear that he never thought about what happens after life, and he seemed a bit perplexed at the concepts I was explaining.  But something in him seemed to wake up and engage in the conversation.  So much so that I was able to slow down and really go through it - I knew I wasn’t going to lose him.  By the end of the chat, he was articulating the gospel clearly.  Sam gave him a Gideon New Testament, and he had a gospel tract summary.

 

The standout chat from Friday’s outreach was a chat with a young couple from India.  They were both nurses, and having just arrived in the country, they were currently searching for jobs.  My daughter has just graduated with her nursing degree, so we were able to talk naturally for a time before I gently steered the conversation to deeper things.  They had a Hindu background.  I don’t get to talk to a lot of Hindu’s so I led the conversation by asking questions about their worldview.  When they made statements, I gently challenged them to understand how they knew the things they were saying were true.  And I had to ask a lot of “what do you mean by that” questions so that we had the best opportunity to understand each other.

 

Through this process, I think they started to see holes in their worldview.  Eventually, the guy had had enough.  He handed me back the gospel tract I had given them at the start and said, “Thank you for your time, but we need to move on”.  That was fine; I didn’t insist they take the tract, and I didn’t push further.  Ploughing had been done.  May the soil be better prepared for the next Christian to come along and continue that conversation.  And maybe share the gospel.

 

Thank you for your continued prayer for this feeble ministry.  May God’s strength be shown through our weakness.  All glory to God alone.

 

View previous Christchurch (NZ) report (2 August 2026)

Christchurch

Christchurch (NZ) Team

Weekly outreaches:
Tue 3:00pm - 5:00pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St; Led by Roger)
Thu 3:00pm - 5:00pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St)
Fri 1:30pm - 3:30pm - City (Bridge of Remembrance)
Sat 11:30am - 1:30pm - 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.