Open-air preaching

Open-air preaching, street preaching, or public preaching is the act of evangelizing a religious faith in public places. It is an ancient method of proselytizing a religious or social message and has been used by many cultures and religious traditions, but today it is usually associated with evangelical Protestant Christianity. Supporters of this approach note that both Jesus and many of the Old Testament prophets often preached about God in public places. It is one of the oldest approaches to evangelism. One of the earliest open-air preachers of Christianity, according to the gospels, was Jesus Christ, whose first specifically recorded sermon was the Sermon on the Mount, which took place on a mountainside in the open air. In the Gospel of Luke (), it was recorded that Jesus also gave an open-air sermon known as the Sermon on the Plain. In Mark 16:15, street preaching is seen as a commandment from Jesus as a way to warn people about sins and their consequences. This is supported by Isaiah 58:1 and Jeremiah 2:2. After Jesus' death and resurrection, many of his apostles and followers started street preaching the gospel in the Temple of Jerusalem and in other open spaces. The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry lists the "many examples of street preaching in the Bible" as including Noah, Solomon, Ezra, Jeremiah, Jonah, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, Peter, Paul, Phillip and Apollos. During the Protestant Reformation, open-air preaching was often employed by Protestants throughout Europe who could not always preach inside churches, which were mostly Catholic. Open-air preaching in Europe continued during the rise of Puritanism and other Protestant movements. It was often used in Pastoral environments as well as in cities, the former sometimes due to a desire to avoid the authorities, and the latter because, for one reason, it could reach eccentric people living in cities who would not otherwise hear the gospel.