Street evangelists in Belfast delivering message to people that many churches fail to get across

ST PAUL famously speaks of ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism’. City churches sometimes struggle to get people to come and consider this message.

Huge expenditure and large, salaried teams never featured prominently in the local Church of the New Testament. The success of the early Church was based around opportunistic and itinerant evangelism.

The public squares and the streets of the ancient world were a fertile fishing ground for souls. Visits to synagogues, or private homes, offered apostles and evangelists further chances to fish.

Long-established traditions of authentic Christian evangelism continue this autumn in our city. At present, Cornmarket and Royal Avenue host a colourful array of street evangelists, who seek neither payment nor privileges.

One elderly gentleman from Co Tyrone visits Cornmarket. He excitedly tells how God in Christ met him in later life’s advancing years.

There is the witness of African-background Christians, singing and preaching in our streets. A group of older men from north, or west, Belfast engage passers-by in conversation and share the gospel.

Perhaps most amazing of all is the former atheist, who studied at Oxford under Richard Dawkins, before encountering Christ while backpacking in south-east Asia.

Cornmarket is spiritually alive these days, with characters just like these, in a way that many of our churches are not.

The ancient Moravian Church, motto ‘Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur’ (‘Our lamb has conquered, let us follow him’), continues to inspire men and women.