EL PASO—More than 400 professions of faith were recorded at an evangelistic rally and strength demonstration led by a team of Christian strongmen in El Paso April 20. An additional 300 people stood up when prompted to indicate that they had prayed to receive Christ.
The rally, housed at the El Paso Coliseum, was the culminating event of a spring break campaign a month earlier in which volunteers from SBTC churches distributed evangelistic packets to 116,000 area homes. In addition to gospel tracts, the packets contained free tickets to the rally, which featured feats of strength performed by Team Impact. Between the feats of strength Team Impact members shared their personal testimonies. At the end of the rally there was a 10-minute gospel presentation and an invitation.
“The event in El Paso was a great success,” SBTC evangelism director Nathan Lorick said. “… The Saturday evening event with Team Impact was the culmination of a lot of hard work and sacrifice for the kingdom’s advancement. We are praying that God will use this event as a catalyst for many more people to come to Christ in the future.”
The week prior to the rally Team Impact held anti-bullying assemblies in El Paso public schools and invited students to attend the Saturday evening event if they wanted to see additional feats of strength. Invitation cards distributed at the assemblies were one key to the rally’s success, according to SBTC evangelism strategist Jack Harris.
“The cards didn’t say anything about God, Jesus or the church,” Harris said. “This was so that people would come to see Team Impact without having to think, ‘We’re going to see some religious thing.’ Then surprisingly they heard the gospel and with no pressure responded to it.”
After the rally the names of those registering salvation decisions were distributed among 12 SBTC pastors in El Paso for follow-up. Each person who professed faith in Christ was to be contacted by a church in their area of town, with large churches bearing a greater share of the follow-up responsibility than smaller ones.
“This is a great opportunity for the pastors and for the people in their churches to get involved and be reenergized in terms of the opportunity they have in a big city like El Paso with a population of 600,000,” Harris said. “The pastors are just very excited about what the future holds, having had this big opportunity to work together and see what God could do.”