Alan Wehnam gives us an insight into his work in the inner city
At Christmas, a group from my church went onto Bethnal Green High Street to tell people about Jesus Christ. A hundred years ago, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, stood on the same street, preaching the same gospel to the same type of people. In his day, the people were poor immigrants from Europe; today they are from Bangladesh.
We set up a book table, with free bibles, videos and tracts, in front of a seedy pub called The Shakespeare. Some of our group sang carols, while others gave shoppers evangelistic Christmas cards. Three of us had prepared a short talk. I was up first.
"Ladies and Gentleman, why do we bother with Christmas?...Well, we bother with Christmas because God was bothered to send us his Son Jesus Christ. Listen to what the Bible says...'For God did not send his Son (Jesus) into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him'..."
As I continued to speak, several people stopped including a young Bangladeshi man on his bike. When I finished, he was talking to two girls in our group. They introduced him to me as 'Ali'. The first thing Ali said to me was: 'I have been wanting to find out more about Jesus for ages. But I've found no one willing to talk to me. Thanks for speaking to me'.
The inner city is a surprising place to live and do gospel work. When I moved to East London to begin Bible college four years ago, the first thing that surprised me was the dense population. A Bengali family that I visited turned out to be three families, fifteen people, sharing a four bedroom flat. As I settled into the area, I was surprised that inner city life was so stressful. I had never lived in such a hectic place or a place where you could see crimes being committed from your front window! When I found out about local churches, I was surprised how few were involved in gospel work. There were approximately 5 people doing evangelism among the 59,000 Bangladeshis in the borough of Tower Hamlets.
It was this realisation that made my wife and I want to stay in the inner city to try and reach Bangladeshis with the gospel. When I started to make friends with Bangladeshis, which I did initially through a local mission worker, I was surprised that they were open to the gospel. The first Bangladeshi whom I got to know well in our local area was a man called Shamerin. I met him through part-time secular work which I did to support my gospel work. After some good conversations about Christ, I gave Shamerin some sections of Mark's gospel in his Bengali dialect (Sylheti). Rather than being closed and hostile as I feared, the next day he asked me for a complete Bible and said that he had given the Mark booklet to his wife to read.
I was surprised that my Bangladeshi friends were receptive to the gospel, but even more surprised by the reaction of strangers on the street. We started doing street evangelism in the area last year, partly because we cannot reach many people through friendships, even on our local estate. Since then, we have been out a few times. I mentioned Ali who we met at Christmas. Not everyone we met was like him; some were indifferent, some were hostile, most were not as knowledgeable about Christianity (Ali asked me about Melchizedek in Hebrews 7!). However, many Bangladeshis were like Ali; they were interested in Christianity, even though we were strangers approaching them on Bethnal Green High Street.
Be prepared for surprises! That is my advice if you are considering inner city gospel work. 'The harvest is plentiful'. Christ's words were true in the days of William Booth; thousands came to Christ when the Salvation Army took the gospel onto the streets of East London. Christ's words are true today; but we need Christians who will sacrifice their comfort to take the gospel on to the streets of our inner cities.
Alan Wenham
For information about Inner City Mission Weekends run in East London email Alan at activ8@fish.co.uk