THE TikTok video that generated lots of of requests without cost Bibles was not, the Revd David Sims admits, his most dignified.
“I used to be dancing in my office, waving the Bible, and saying ‘If you wish one, I’ll send you one without cost,’” he recalled this week. “Within around three or 4 days, it had had over 100,000 views, and I’d had lots of of messages saying ‘I’d love a free Bible.’”
Mr Sims, Vicar of St Thomas’s, Aldridge, in Walsall, has been broadcasting on TikTok for greater than six years, and holds a daily Sunday service on the location. But, while at one time he sent out two or three Bibles every week, the dancing video last spring has brought the whole to greater than 2800. He now has a team of ten to twenty volunteers who spend Monday mornings packaging up Bibles to send out.
The requests mainly got here from people, typically aged 20 to 40, who didn’t go to church, he said. “An excellent variety of individuals are enthusiastic about church and spirituality but don’t know where to go. I don’t get the sense that we’re the start of the journey for people: that hunger is already there.” Some people had come across his TikTok after asking God for an indication.
With every Bible, often within the New International Version, the team sends the “Why Jesus” booklet produced by Alpha International, and a guide to the books of the Bible, with a suggestion to start with the Gospels.
The volunteer may even include a note expressing the hope that the Bible is a blessing to the recipient. Mr Sims also recommends to those who get back in contact that they struggle the 321 course produced by the evangelist Glen Scrivener, and that they connect with their local church. Some of those that received the Bible have since been baptised or are pursuing a call to ministry.
While Mr Sims advises starting with the Gospels, he was told recently by one woman that she was “halfway through Leviticus” and had develop into a Christian. He reflects: “Who I’m to inform the Lord how his Word could be used? . . . I feel what that is teaching me is that God can bring people to himself through the facility of his Spirit. He doesn’t need our help.”
The narrative of a “quiet revival” resonated together with his own experience, Mr Sims said. “People have turned up at our church already wanting to be baptised having read the Bible.”
“I’ve never seen evangelism be this easy,” he observed. “But there may be also a way that I’m becoming a bit bolder. . . We usually are not going out doing big evangelistic campaigns. It have to be a piece of God, which is actually exciting.”
