As believers we must endeavour to do great things for God. I moved to Oyibi, a fast developing town located 30 km north of Accra in the latter part of 2020 and immediately I began to evangelise at the trotro station on Saturdays. For those of you who do not know what “trotro” is, “trotro” is the local name for a bus conveying customers from a point to another with many stops along the way; usually starting from a main station.
I would wake up early on a Saturday morning and head to the main trotro station to preach the gospel to people in the loading trotro. I would take advantage of the time customers had to wait for the bus to fill up before setting off to preach to those seated.
Evangelism is the main mandate Jesus left for us before He ascended into heaven. Mark 16:15 says “and He said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”. Preaching the gospel is not the work of only pastors but for everyone. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 4:5, “But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry”. We are all evangelists and the work of preaching the gospel is for every believer. Due to my corporate endeavours (I work from Monday to Friday), I dedicate my Saturdays to evangelism. Soul winning is the heartbeat of our Lord Jesus. If you want to please Jesus, win souls !! The Bible says in Luke 15: 7, “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance”.
One afternoon at the beginning of 2021, I saw a vision whilst in prayer. When you are in prayer, be very sensitive because God can show you pictures, words, visions, etc. As we read in Jeremiah 33:3, “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and [a]mighty things, which you do not know”. In prayer God can reveal to you great things. Whilst I was praying I saw in a vision that I was at the Oyibi trotro station and I heard a voice in the vision that said, “organise a crusade at this trotro station on October 21st this year” (2021). The vision and the voice were very clear so I knew what the Holy Spirit wanted me to do. As believers we are led by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit can lead you through visions and dreams. I began to pray into this vision for confirmation. It is fine to get confirmation of divine mandates. Once it is of the Lord, He will confirm His word. A few weeks later, I had a dream and in the dream a prophet I know spoke to me about the fact that I needed to pray for power because of the crusade God wanted me to organise. Immediately I woke up from the dream I knew God had confirmed His word. May God reveal His plans to you through dreams.
Secondly I had to speak to my Senior Pastor to get his authorization to organise the crusade. It is important that even when you get a divine leading, you get the backing of your spiritual authority. In Acts Chapter 13 when the Holy Spirit directed that Paul and Barnabas be separated unto the work they had been called to by the Holy Spirit, the prophets and teachers still laid hands on them in order to release them unto the assignment. Spiritual authority plays a big role in our walk with God and I believe I will soon write on the subject. I arranged a meeting with my Senior Pastor and told him about the leadings of the Spirit. He did not object to it and said I should go ahead with the crusade. I was very happy and immediately put a team together.
I had never organised a crusade so I relied heavily on the Holy Spirit for His plans, and also spent time watching crusades of renowned men of God like Bishop Dag Heward Mills and Reinhard Bonnke for inspiration. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says “…And there is nothing new under the sun”. People have done what you are now planning to do.
We began by shifting the focus of our Saturday evangelism to the Oyibi Area. We started winning souls and speaking to them about the crusade. We also invested heavily in prayers by setting time aside weekly to pray into the crusade. At that point I did not know what I had gotten myself into. I did not know once you decided to do something like this, the gates of hell would rise up against you. I prayed into it fervently and began to ask God to show up at the crusade. Then I began to have very strange dreams; all kinds of nightmares like men and women dressed in traditional attires (mostly juju men or warlocks) warning me not to the crusade, and other dreams of policemen chasing me, etc. The more I had such dreams, the more I intensified prayers.
Organising an (outdoor) crusade is not only about the spiritual; you also need to get the venue, rent the stage, lights etc. In my case, the venue was the trotro station so I had to speak to the station master, who had to table it at a committee meeting and then revert in a few weeks. I began to engage sound engineers, stage setup technicians, etc. I then brought a few people on board to help with fundraising to pay for the items needed such as tracts, t-shirts, posters, etc. It costs a lot for the gospel to be preached and do not be deceived by the devil if he tells you not to support your church with your resources. Spreading the gospel requires money and when you read Acts 2, you would learn that people sold their lands to help push the work of the ministry.
Time was now fast approaching, and we finally got authorisation from the station master to organise the crusade on the said date. We began to raise awareness by putting up the posters and distributing flyers. We also kept praying to God, believing Him for a successful crusade. See below a few photos of our evangelism drive.
Look out for Part 2 of this post to learn how the devil tried to frustrate the crusade and failed.
