The image below doesn’t belie the importance of the moment: It’s just a guy holding a hamburger bag while talking to another man on a bike.

Big deal, right? Well, good things can sometimes come in boring photos. (This is part 3 in a series. Click here for part 1, and here for part 2.)

The burger bag guy is Brian, a new student from the one day evangelism class I taught in Sacramento last week. There was a problem here. We were trying to get Brian to sit down and eat with the rest of the students during the lunch break, but he was too busy sharing his faith. And the class hadn’t even finished yet! He had clothes-lined the man as he bicycled through a parking lot!

How rude!

Except Bike-man didn’t think so. He thanked Brian, shook his hand and, I think, gave him a hug, the keys to his car and put him in his will….

We had two goals for this small church in the ‘burbs of Sacramento before our team of five left L.A. to teach this congregation the principles of biblical evangelism: 1) We wanted the Pastor to get on board with street witnessing. 2) We hoped for at least two members out of this church of fifty adults to catch the fire.

It turns out that three adults caught the fire. The man in the photo above, (who will be teaching a class of his own); the Pastor’s son, Dustin; and the church’s administrator, Bonnie, who told me about her own witnessing experience.

She talked to man who didn’t care that he was going to Hell; Bonnie started crying and couldn’t finish the conversation. I reassured her that he’ll never forget that conversation. I reminded Bonnie of what Catherine Booth, wife of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once said, “If you haven’t got tears in your eyes, let them hear tears in your voice.”

Bonnie had them in both places.

And what about the pastor, Mark Dahlin? Did he get on fire for this biblical principle that is guaranteed to unlock the heart of a sinner?

I just received an email from him today; it was a letter to his church and it began this way:  

Leaning over into the security vehicle I heard these words over the security officer’s walkie-talkie: “We have a group of Born- Agains in the mall!”  The officer smiled at me, lifted one eyebrow and said,  “They’re with you aren’t they?” I smiled and told her, “Yes,” then explained the constitutional right we had to be there and told her what we wanted to do.

Uh, oh! I think he learned all too well.