Evangelizing Vegas

After last week’s pleasant experience in Utah, I expected a rude awakening when I repeated the experiment in Vegas. As it turns out, my street evangelization in Sin City was rather less eventful than anticipated–but no less fruitful.

On Sunday, I joined up the with St. Paul Street Evangelization Las Vegas team, headed up by the inestimable Ed Graveline. We met at the Mirage hotel and set up camp in 100 degree weather in direct sunlight out on The Strip. Not gonna do much good if there isn’t any sacrifice, after all. We set up a sign that said “Catholic Truth” and offered free rosaries to people who passed by. If they accepted, we gave them a pamphlet about how to pray the rosary and asked if they were Catholic. The conversation went from there.

I was surprised by the number of people who stopped. I seemed to be particularly good at getting groups of young men to stop–leftover skills from my years of obsessing over boys, I suppose. Unfortunately, most of them just wanted to chat with the girl who was handing out free stuff–with all her clothes on, which must have been a surprise in Vegas. I’ve learned something very important from this: if I’m going to do street evangelization, I need a copy of my business card that doesn’t have my phone number. A few of these guys seemed genuinely interested and might have checked out some stuff on my blog but I was not about to go handing out my phone number indiscriminately to groups of guys who had just spent the weekend in Vegas. I didn’t give out my number to guys when I was dating–it’s definitely not happening now.

Aside from the flirting men, there were plenty of people who stopped to talk. One family wanted rosaries for all their kids. Another lady asked for one; “I’m not Catholic,” she said, “just open-minded.” Plenty of people told me they go to Mass “sometimes” but nobody seemed upset when I suggested they go every week. “You’re required to spend 57 hours a year in church,” I always say. “That’s less than one percent of your life. Doesn’t God deserve that?”

I was expecting more animosity–more accusations of sexism or pedophilia. But everybody who stopped was friendly–and even the people who kept walking did no worse than avoid eye contact. I think sometimes the internet poisons our view of humanity. So many people are anti-Catholic when commenting on blogs, but maybe it’s not so much conviction as anonymity that fuels their rage. I don’t tend to view myself as persecuted or rejected; the non-Christians I know are generally very open to hearing about my life and very kind even when they think I’m deluded. But I figured my friends were just particularly lovely and that the minute I stood up in Sin City with a sign bearing the images of Jesus and Mary I’d be in for it. Not only were there no furious non-Catholics, though, I didn’t even encounter any disgruntled Catholics. One woman told me sadly that she used to go to Mass every week but the priests only cared about the people with money. Not an objection I’d heard before but I could tell it was coming from a place of hurt and so I apologized to her and told her the Church wanted her back. She thanked me and continued on her way; who knows what that moment of love might have done?

My favorite encounter of the day was with a group of twenty-somethings. Two weren’t really interested, but a young American man and a young British woman had tons of questions. Both were very interested in learning more about how to pray the rosary; there was a real hunger in the man’s voice as he said he knew he needed more prayer in his life. Neither was Catholic but they promised to read the pamphlets and start praying. I challenged them to pray every day–the Rosary, time in Scripture, silent meditation, whatever.

The young woman was a member of the Church of England and wanted to know why the Church couldn’t accept homosexuality and abortion–which meant she was wondering why Catholics couldn’t accept homosexuals and post-abortive women. I got her to agree that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being, then explained that we believe that an unborn baby is a human being. That said, I emphasized, Jesus came in mercy and forgiveness and wants us to love each other. “Oh,” she said. “So you tell people that abortion is wrong, but if they do it, you forgive them?” Exactly!

When we moved on to homosexuality, I explained that a third of what the Catechism teaches about homosexuality is that homophobia is gravely wrong. It’s always our job to love people, never to judge. Every single person I know is a sinner and I refuse to let those people be defined by their sins–I just love them. (Basically, I paraphrased this post.) She seemed really pleased to know that authentic Christianity really does love the sinner and hate the sin. The young man wanted to know if it was okay to be ignorant about Jesus and religion and I told him that I thought he wanted better than that. We can’t really know Jesus if we don’t bother learning anything about him. After about fifteen minutes, I gave them both my card so they could read more about apologetics. Both promised to pray and research–are you guys reading this?

The afternoon was incredibly fruitful. I must have spoken at some length to a good thirty people. But I can’t take the street evangelization team with me every time I go, so the next night I hit The Strip on my own, sporting my red Catholic shirt again. I set up shop by the incredible Bellagio fountains–by which I mean I put down my purse and stood awkwardly in my shirt waiting for someone to take pity on me and strike up a conversation.

It didn’t take long. Martin, a young Evangelical from Belgium, stopped to commend me on my work. “You evangelicals are usually much better at evangelizing than Catholics are,” I said. “I don’t know,” he replied. “You’re the one out here in that shirt. Not me.” We talked for a bit about being Christian but there was an older gentleman hovering, clearly wanting to ask a question, so I said goodbye to Martin, encouraged by his support and his promised prayers.

What followed was long and incoherent and culminated in this question:

As a Catholic, what’s your position on secondhand smoke?

And it just got less relevant. For twenty minutes, he talked about all the things that are wrong with the world and I nodded. I could tell that he just wanted someone to listen to him and I was happy to be that person. It wasn’t even too tough not to be frustrated at how he was “wasting my time” since I knew that probably nobody else would have been talking to me anyway.

After he left, I waited, trying not to be overwhelmed by scantily-clad showgirls and teenage girls and middle-aged ladies. As it turns out, Vegas street evangelization is 5% evangelization, 10% hoping someone will stop to talk, and 85% trying not to judge people for their clothes. An hour (and four fountain shows) after my secondhand smoke conversation, I headed home.

I repeated the experiment this afternoon and found myself again serving as a listening ear to someone who’s ignored. Robin was standing on the sidewalk trying to sell me a Bible; when I told her I already had one on me, she went on to talk about how important God is. She had a beautiful spirit and a real love of God and if the only reason the Lord sent me to Vegas was to affirm her love of him, it was well worth it.

But three conversations in an hour and a half isn’t doing it for me. I think the shirt is part of the problem. The message is only visible from one side and it’s not in-your-face enough that people believe I really mean it. So I’m thinking of ordering something like this:

Or maybe “Free prayers” on the front. That’s a less confrontational opening and might just lead to fellowship and listening to people who are struggling and straight up praying over people on the street and I love that kind of stuff!

But that shirt is super dull and I have zero design skills. So I’m not sure it would be much better.

Then there’s the question of posture. Standing seems to be more effective than sitting. But what do I do with my arms? Should I make eye contact? Maybe even ask people if they have questions?¹ What I’m telling you is I’d love some input. I may try this in L.A. next week–maybe on Venice Beach? I don’t really know anything about the West Coast–and I’d like to be a little less bored.

I don’t know how to be effective–but I think this is something the Lord has called me to. And the beauty of following him is that I don’t have to know what he’s trying to accomplish, I just have to do what he asks. Maybe there’s one conversation I’ll have that will make the whole thing worthwhile. Maybe the point of the exercise is to shut up and be a witness.² Maybe it’s just about obedience in a seemingly futile task. Maybe it’s about embracing awkwardness. It doesn’t really matter why the Lord has me doing this–what matters is that he does (I think) and that I want to be the best I can for him. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

1. I don’t know if I can do this. I felt so totally in-your-face the first time I wore the shirt, I’m pretty sure that if I tried to stand by myself and address strangers I’d just shrivel up into a ball. [↩]
2. I’m not so great at shutting up. This should be good for me. [↩]