Full-Throttle Evangelism Reaches Bikers

The Church: Kitty Hawk Baptist Church, Kitty Hawk, N.C.
The Challenge: Have a greater impact serving and sharing the Gospel at a local community festival for motorcyclists
One Key Idea: Participate in local community events or festivals. Offer free food to create opportunities to interact with the people in attendance. Don’t hesitate from doing ministry because you don’t have all the resources. Ask God to bring people you can work with and partner with them.

Outreach spoke with Pastor Don Teears, who says a fresh approach to outreach at an annual event for motorcyclists energized his congregation to share their faith.

On engaging with community events
Teears says 70-member Kitty Hawk Baptist Church had participated in the local Outer Banks Bike Week since 2007. The nine-day festival attracts 20,000 people to the North Carolina beachfront community. The church annually supplied its parking lot as space for a vendor show during the event and handed out thousands of microfiber towels wrapped around the gospel of John and a salvation tract.

On making a change for greater impact
Faith Riders, a Christian organization at the Daytona Beach, Fla., Bike Week, saw 300 people come to Christ when it offered visitors chances to win a motorcycle if they first listened to a short salvation message. Teears, who had visited the Daytona Bike Week, took the idea to his parishioners, who developed a flip chart presentation to share the Four Spiritual Laws in less than five minutes. Kitty Hawk Baptist Church decided to offer a free meal from the church-sponsored concession stand and a chance to win $500 if motorcyclists would listen to the salvation message.

Although church attendees were eager to hand out towels in previous years, Teears says he knew many were shy about sharing the Gospel with strangers. The flip chart helped them overcome that.

“I heard from several [church members], ‘I’ve never given the Gospel till today,’” Teears says. “That’s huge as a pastor to think you’ve helped someone take that next step in the Christian walk.”

About 30 people accepted Christ during the week.

On connecting with a group outside the church’s comfort zone
Teears says Kitty Hawk Baptist is not a “biker church”—only one person in the church owns a motorcycle—and attendees did not know how they would connect with bikers at the festival. But they stepped out in faith.

“So many in our church have embraced this,” Teears says. “One of our people saw a guy in a restaurant in a motorcycle T-shirt, asked him what kind of bike he rides and invited him to church on Sunday. He never would have done that it we hadn’t been part of Bike Week.”


MORE ABOUT KITTY HAWK BAPTIST CHURCH
Launched: 1972
Weekend Attendance: 70
Kitty Hawk Baptist Church was profiled in “Small Church America” in the January/February 2012 issue of Outreach.

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