|PIC1|Starting last Sunday, Pastor Jonathan Oloyede led a team of 30 people from his church, City Chapel, in delivering gospel tracts to 4,200 homes in Beckton and prayer-walking the streets. The team included two crew members from Operation Mobilisation’s new ministry ship, Logos Hope, which is currently docked in London’s Canary Wharf.

The tracts were simply dropped through people’s letterboxes and if someone came to the door, members of the team took the opportunity to tell them that about the love of Jesus for them and invite them to church.

“After Pentecost it was mission. Now that we’ve prayed, let’s go on to the streets and preach the Gospel,” says Pastor Jonathan, who planted the multi-national City Chapel in January and helped mobilise 50,000 Christians to prayer on Pentecost Sunday in his role as convener of the Global Day of Prayer London.

Now that the tracts have been delivered, the team is planning to follow up with door-knocking and sharing the Gospel one-to-one with those who invite them in.

“Jesus told us to go. He didn’t tell them to come. So we are taking the Gospel to where the people are,” says Pastor Jonathan.

“That’s the spirit of Paul and the early apostles. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

He hopes other churches will be inspired to take up door-to-door evangelism and reach even more of the capital’s seven and a half million people.

“Even in London where church attendance is relatively high we are not yet scratching the surface,” he said.

“Six hundred and fifty thousand Christians attend church regularly in London. That is good but it is not good enough.

“It means millions of people are not coming to our churches so we need to bring the Gospel of Jesus to the houses to the people where they are.

“If 30 of us could do that in two hours how much more could 650,000 Christians do? So we can do it. We can take the city if we really try.”

As part of its outreach, City Chapel has also started to commit part of its tithes to people who are suffering financially in the recession. One seriously ill man in Newcastle recently received a cheque to help him buy an orthopaedic bed, while a couple in London were helped with their mortgage payments.

Says Pastor Jonathan: “People need practical Christianity at this time.”