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DALLAS?Students from The Criswell College took a field trip?one very different from trips to the zoo and the museum they might have taken in junior high school. This field trip had eternal significance.
On a recent Wednesday morning, students, faculty and administrators of the college met for Harvest Day, a one-hour evangelism blitz in the neighborhood around the college. Students met first to pray in the chapel, pick up “Heroes” gospel tracts and receive brief instructions. The instructions, given by Alan Streett, evangelism professor at the college, were simple: gather in groups of three, be yourself, be friendly and introduce yourself to the people in the neighborhood.
After the instruction time, the 300 missionaries flooded the streets around the east Dallas campus in the shadows of downtown’s skyscrapers. The groups entered businesses, knocked on doors, talked to people on the streets, prayed with folks at nearby Baylor Hospital and passed out nearly 3,000 tracts.
The neighborhood around The Criswell College is multi-faceted. Once an affluent part of the city, during the last couple of decades it has become an area known for crime, drug deals and gang wars. One street, Swiss Avenue, with its spacious homes, still gives a glimpse into the area’s more prosperous past.
In recent years, however, a renaissance of sorts has taken place. Crack houses have been torn down to make way for town homes, Brownstones, and other newly renovated upscale apartments. Some of the newer residents are doctors and nurses who work at Baylor, as well as business people working downtown.
The students and faculty from Criswell wanted to let all their neighbors?wealthy and poor?know that they were there and they cared and most importantly, God cared.
College President Jerry Johnson said he told the students to first introduce themselves and then ask, “How can I pray for you?”
When Johnson was a student at The Criswell College in the mid-1980s, Paige Patterson, then the college president, was the first to implement this type of evangelistic blitz.
“We [students] all thought it was a radical idea, an exciting idea, but everyone was a little uncertain, too, because we were going out,” Johnson said.
After he returned from his first missionary journey on the east Dallas streets, Johnson began seeing the vision God had given Patterson.
“It was a wonderful experience and I remember it even today,” Johnson said.
The current crop of Criswell students walked the streets for an hour, then returned to the chapel on campus for a time of sharing. About 20 people stood before their peers for 35 minutes and told of their experiences. They spoke of the fear and apprehension they felt before they left. They spoke of having to get out of their “comfort zone.” They laughed about the negative experiences (being cursed, avoided, etc.). And they rejoiced at the positive experiences (prayer, hugs, sharing the gospel, people accepting Christ).
But the most constant theme of the wrap-up time was the “divine appointments” students described as experiencing.
One student told of talking with a man holding a baby outside Baylor Hospital. The man had a patch over his eye from recent eye surgery. The student prayed with the man and shared the gospel with him and the man accepted Christ. The student said the man had surgery on his physical eyes, but God opened his spiritual eyes.
As Greta Canfield and the two others in her group began to witness in a small east Dallas convenience store, Canfield said she felt the Spirit’s tug to approach a female customer.
“God just directed me to that person,” Canfield said.
She told how the woman believed she had too many problems for God to overcome. She didn’t want to talk. Canfield, however, pressed on. She began asking questions to break down walls. With each answer the bricks in the wall began to crumble and the woman slowing began to understand that she had much in common with this particular messenger of G
