SFOI 1000
Evangelist: Rod Grubb
Boise State University
Date: Saturday, Dec 23, '23
What a great way to end this year’s #SFOI1000 outreach season— with a sunny midday outreach! Make no mistake, it was cold , 33°-37°, which translated to about 25°, with the windchill IMHO, almost anything beats a night outreach, especially in winter.
For this outreach, it was Rodney Whitt (his wife Cheryl), and myself. Mathematically, that’s Rod² (Rod squared) I just love them both. Rodney drives in from Mountain Home (just under 60 miles east) just to take part in these local Treasure Valley outreaches! And for Cheryl, she just returned home, last night, from central California— a 12 hour drive
Rodney and Cheryl were passing out Rodney’s custom Merry Christmas tracts and
I did a combination of Living Waters Christmas Million Dollar Bills and Gospel Tract Planet’s Christmas Cash (mostly for the younger crowd). Rodney and Cheryl went through all 200 of their Merry Christmas tracts, and I probably did 300-400 tracts total, PTL!
I was blessed with a few of gospel conversations. One was with a group of 4 youngsters on Lime/Uber scooters, another was with 3 young Catholics boys, and yet another was with young man. Praise be to the Lord, for every opportunity.
I met a young man Max, who was working for BEST Crowd Management, doing at the pedestrian crosswalk control on University Dr. at Grant Ave.
Max said he was an Orthodox Christian, after he heard me deliver the gospel to some of those I mentioned earlier. He was curious if I was a Protestant, which I said I was. And then, what denomination— Baptist. I told him I am reformed and I talked about expository preaching.
Max was deeply concerned about his generation and how many are atheists there are. I told him that I happen to be a recovering atheist, so I could definitely relate. I gave Max my ministry business card, if he wanted to stay in touch with me.
I had full intentions of open-air preaching today. My street sermon topic was going to be, “The Christmas Gift”. I was also brought my Christmas I.Q. flip chart, as a means to open-air the gospel. However, there were three things that caused me
to reconsider.
First, there were no really concentrated groups of people in my normal open-air spot adjacent to the stadium. That was probably due to the fact that there very few locals for this game. Secondly, because of the frigid temps, the passing pedestrians were in a rush to get to the stadium. And lastly, it was just too windy for the flip chart.
Maybe next season Yay Jesus
Date: Saturday, Nov 11, '23
Last night’s BSU game against the University of New Mexico Lobos marked our first and (thankfully) only evening Sports Fan Outreach International (SFOI) outreach of the season. Night outreaches are generally tougher because people naturally tend to be more defensive, and harder to approach, after dark.
And while attendance for game was listed at nearly 34,000 (or 94% of capacity), foot traffic seemed lower than usual at our primary outreach corner, just south of the stadium parking lot, on University Dr. at Grant Ave. My partner Dean and I also didn’t see the typically long line of fans filing into the game, in the south parking lot adjacent to the stadium.
Between Dean and I, we probably passed out somewhere between 200 and 300 million dollar bill tracts. Because yesterday was Veterans Day, we primarily used Living Waters Patriotic Million Dollar Bills (https://store.livingwaters.com/patriotic-million-dollar...). They served as an excellent way to wish our veterans, families, and friends a Happy Veterans Day
PTL, I was able to find enough lighting, in the south stadium parking lot, to be able to open-air preach a Veterans Day message from Romans 13:7-14. Sadly, because of the light crowds, and apart from two young Christians, very few people actually heard the message.
Despite what outwardly weren’t the best of circumstances, we still had every reason to praise our Lord! Yay Jesus, the gospel was preached and the good news was distributed to hundreds of football fans. Christ was made known and God received the glory
Be sure to mark your calendars for our two remaining SFOI1000# football outreaches, at Albertsons Stadium. We plan to outreach each game for 2 hours immediately prior to kickoff.
➊ Air Force Academy vs Boise State Friday, November 24 @ 2PM
➋ 2023 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl Saturday, December 23rd @ 1:30PM
As always, please pray about joining our SFOI outreach team for a couple of hours, prior to kickoff. Afterwards, you can go and enjoy the game
Date: Friday, Nov 24, '23
PTL, for early afternoon games during this time of year! Two weeks ago it was an 8pm kickoff for the New Mexico Lobos. Cold and dark isn’t the most evangelism friendly setting I can think of.
Trust me, it was still cold (33℉), this morning, when I arrived at 10:45am. But it was a bright sunny day and I was layered up and had my hand warmers. Nice brisk football weather!
Our SFOI Team for this afternoon’s Air Force Academy game actually consisted of two teams. Robert Viera and his son Phillip, and my team: Dean Juday and Sue Goodrich. Each team outreached separate locations in and around Albertsons Stadium parking lot.
I was blessed to begin the outreach with an early gospel conversation with two young men, Jacob and Marco. It was a fairly quick and to-the-point “good” person test gospel message. Thankfully, both were not in any particular hurry since there was over two hours to game time. Since both understood their position in front of a holy God, I felt no need to hold them up in conversation. I did give them a “Thanks For Listening” card (http://store.livingwaters.com/.../thanks-for-listening.html) and a Psalm 51 Prayer of Repentance card (http://t.co/x0cb3suNEE).
Our team (Dean, Sue, and I) concentrated on L.W.’s Christmas million dollar bill tracts today. I also passed quite a few L.W.’s Thanksgiving MDB’s, which I presented as leftover turkey bucks to go along with all the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.
With a little under an hour to kickoff; Dean, Sue, and I; headed into the south stadium parking for some open-air preaching and to pass out more tracts. Since today is officially known as Black Friday (as the official start of the Christmas shopping season), I was led to preach on contentment today. Using some selected contentment verses and contentment quotes, I was able to communicate some pertinent biblical truths and the gospel to the fast moving crowd.
At one point during the open-air, campus security came up to Dean and Sue and politely told them they could not pass out tracts because they weren’t “space paying” vendors. As a team, we agreed to cease with the tracts and I went back to preaching without further incident.
When I finished, the two campus security officers returned to tell me that they had double-checked with their supervisor and found out that while we wouldn’t be allowed to hand out tracts, there wasn’t any prohibition against open-air preaching. Praise the Lord, for these diligent officers who took the time to look into our situation!
Robert and Phillip had a fruitful afternoon at their two locations— passing out tracts on Broadway Ave. and open-air preaching on University Dr. at E. Bronco Ln. Since both of these locations are on public streets, they faced no interference from either campus security or Boise PD. Conservatively, between our two teams, we were probably blessed to hand out over 1K tracts— Yay Jesus
BTW, BSU defeated Air Force 27-19 today and are still in the alive for postseason play. We could potentially see a playoff game here at Albertsons Stadium. A lot of this depends on UNLV’s upcoming game against San José tomorrow in Las Vegas.
Date: Saturday, Oct 7, '23
For last Saturday evening’s BSU/San José State game our team was greeted with an absolutely beautiful afternoon weather to outreach in! Our team enjoyed completely blue skies and warm fall temps lingering just below 80℉.
Our 6-person team passed out tracts and did some open-air preaching for nearly two full hours prior to the 6pm kickoff. We estimate that we conservatively passed out around 1K tracts with a mixture of million dollar bills and “Are You a Good Person?” tracts. TY Lord for Robert and Shane Viera, Rodney Whitt, Sue DeDea Goodrich, and Dean Juday who joined me this afternoon at Albertsons Stadium.
Both Robert and I were able to open-air preach on-campus adjacent to the stadium. PTL, we faced no official opposition in a location we were forced to leave twice last season. Yay Jesus!
Please keep our next home game, versus Wyoming on the 28th, in your prayers.
#evangelism
#openairpreaching
— Rod Grubb (@RodGrubb) October 7, 2023
Date: Saturday, Sep 9, '23
It was a beautiful day at Albertsons Stadium for the Boise State/University of Central Florida, for this afternoon’s season home opener.
There were very large crowds all around the stadium. I picked a fairly busy street corner opposite the main stadium entrance and was blessed to pass out nearly 800 “Bronco Bucks” million dollar bills.
PTL, I was also able to open-air preach for about 30-40 minutes right next to a large slow-moving ticket line at the south end of the stadium. Yay Jesus, our team today consisted of the Lord and me.
