How did early "street evangelization" differ from the modern practice?

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Consider that relatively recently George Whitefield gave over 18,000 evangelistic sermons, mostly outdoors--up to 30,000 in attendance. He had a booming voice and spoke from his heart. Even skeptics like David Hume and Ben Franklin would go out of their way to listen to Whitefield preach.

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If we look at scripture, we can see that great effort was taken to make the presentation of the gospel make sense within the cultural context of the day and people being reached. Hebrews addresses the Jews in a way that focuses on how the old testament pointed to Jesus. Roman's focuses on a logical presentation of core gospel from a context the Roman's could understand.

The Jews were frequently reached out to in synagogues where they went for religious learning. Paul reached out to the Greeks by speaking in their place of religious discussion and used reference to their own alter to the "unknown god" to reach them. The only thing that really remained consistent was the message of Truth. The how and the where were changed to fit the time, the place and the people.

At the time, without the Internet or mass media, people got their news and learning locally, directly from talking with people. Additionally, culturally, individual preachers tended to accumulate followings then rather than stand alone churches. This explains John the Baptist's following. He's not so much a parallel to a street preacher as he is to a Billy Graham convention or the lead pastor of a church. (He actually primarily spoke out away from people and people came to him. [Matthew 3:1 - In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea])

Our methods of getting information is much different now and our culture far less personal. The approach of street preaching doesn't fit the cultural perspective of the day and so it is dismissed as irrelevant since the methods being used are irrelevant to the culture.

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