Preparing Fishers of Men

Pastor Bill Welzien speaks with members of the group from Falls OPC

Ten people – youth group members and chaperones – from Falls OPC in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin spent a week in June learning to fish on Key West. The team took on many projects and participated in the worship services, and activities of Keys Presbyterian Church (OPC), but the main focus of the trip was training by Pastor Bill Welzien. He taught about talking to strangers about the gospel, but the students also learned Pastor Bill’s method of one-on-one evangelism within a relationship. This method, which Pastor Bill calls “Table Top Evangelism,” is Biblically saturated and easy to use. After a few hours studying, the students felt equipped to use it.

Pastor Bill keeps a few books on hand to give out when doing evangelism: Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard, Holiness of God and Chosen By God, both by R.C. Sproul. This Minister of the gospel, is a faithful evangelist with a pastor’s heart. He listens to everyone, and builds rapport.

Upon arrival at Mallory Square you should not be surprised if Pastor Bill received a hug from the family member of one of the performers on the pier. It was a performer who coined the pier’s nickname for him, “Bible Bill.”  He speaks to these folks with obvious affection and tenderness. Some of the performers attended Keys Presbyterian Church for a while, but have since fallen away, but Bill has not given up on these folks. How beautiful it is to see such a heart – that bleeds for the lost as well as for Christ’s wandering sheep. When one of the performers drowned, the brother asked Pastor Bill to conduct a funeral service; another opportunity for the gospel.

After 26 years of open air preaching, two twenty minute messages per night, three nights per week, Pastor Bill can say – with an air of genuine privilege in his voice, “I can’t believe I get to do this.” Could it be that God would take one of the youth in your church and raise him up to be such a man of God with these gifts and this perspective?

Let’s send more young people to train in his laboratory in sunny Key West, Florida. Come and experience a most glorious sunset, complete with the preaching of the glorious Word of Truth and Life, and let us pray that more fishers of men will be raised up from the next generation like this one.