The Big Shanty Festival is held each year in April in the city of Kennesaw. This is one of the largest arts and crafts shows held in the Southeast that, this year, attracted over 55,000 people to the city of Kennesaw for the two day event. Harvestfire Church International is a member of the Kennesaw Business Association and has had a booth in the festival for the past four previous years. They had ministered to folks who came by the booth and handed out materials, but never had made any serious attempt to evangelize in the past four years. This was not due to a lack of desire on their part; they just didn’t have the knowledge or training on how to do it effectively.
This year was totally different! I spent Thursday and Friday training the congregation and going out to various places around the area to give them some hands on opportunity to put what they learned to work. By the end of Friday night we had led 203 people to the Lord! Harvestfire had set a goal to win 1000 people to Jesus over the weekend and we already had a running start just in the training phase! The church got so excited they couldn’t wait for the festival to start Saturday morning.
We had a team of 22 people working both days of the festival. On Saturday we led 527 people to the Lord for a total for the three days up to that point of 705 people. On Sunday, from noon to 5:00pm we saw another 289 folks pray the prayer of salvation for a grand total for the four days of 1019 people praying the prayer of salvation! God is so awesome! We met our goal and then some!
Riley Stephenson Evangelism Blog 