September 7, 2024
LEESBURG, Ga. – In a busy grocery store parking lot, Tim Williams struck up a conversation with a bagboy on Saturday, talking not about sports, nor grocery prices, nor weather, nor politics.
They talked about spiritual matters.
No, the young man didn’t know Jesus as his Lord and Savior. But, yes, he wanted to. So, there, in that parking lot, guided by Williams, he unashamedly prayed to receive Christ.
Williams runs into people just about everywhere he goes who, like that young man, are spiritually hungry, who feel an emptiness inside, who are searching for what’s missing in their lives.
As an evangelism consultant for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, Williams knows what’s missing, or, rather, who's missing, and he’s quick to offer them Jesus.
In fact, he has personally led some 225 people to Christ this year and more than 70,000 over his 30-plus years of ministry.
“Tim talks about Jesus everywhere he goes,” said JJ Washington, an evangelism catalyst for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board. “God geared him that way. He’s at his best when he’s pointing others to the way of salvation.”
Last week, traveling to an appointment in Columbus, Williams ducked into a McDonald’s restaurant to grab some food. At the soda machine, he was talking to a woman about Jesus while an older man cleaned the floor nearby. It turned out she was a Christian, but he wasn’t.
“I turned to him and said, ‘do you have a personal relationship with Christ?’ He said, ‘no, I don’t, but I’ve been listening, and I’d like to have one.’ We held hands and prayed out loud right there in McDonald’s and he gave his life to Christ.”
A few days earlier, in a restaurant in Cordele, Williams was sharing the plan of salvation with his waitress. She listened intently for a while, then said she had to get back to work. But she said she would return in a bit. He thought that was her way of saying she wasn’t interested.
“She came back, sat down, and said, ‘OK, tell me more,’” Williams recalled.
Williams asked her where she would go if she were to die.
“She said, ‘I hope I would go to heaven, but I’m just not sure.’ I shared the gospel with her. And she prayed out loud with us to receive Christ as her Savior and Lord.”
Washington said those kinds of experiences are commonplace for Williams.
At the height of his ministry as a vocational evangelist, Williams would routinely see 60 to 100 people or more come to faith in revivals he preached.
He still preaches a few revivals, including a four-day series of meetings earlier this year at First Baptist Church in Sylvester where 30 people made professions of faith.
The key to winning lost souls to Christ either one-on-one or in a church service, Williams said, is having faith that it will happen.
“You’ve got to believe that God is going to do something,” he said. “A lot of these guys are defeated, and they don’t expect anything. We have to know that Jesus wants to save people. That’s why He came and died on the cross.”
Samuel Ayala, a Georgia Baptist Mission Board missions consultant in south Georgia, said Williams has a passion for winning souls.
“When we see Tim, we say, ‘there he is, leading another one to Christ,’” Ayala said. “He’s a gifted evangelist. He’s a people person. Once he starts engaging with a person, that person opens up and has confidence in him.”
Williams was led to Christ when he was 7 years old by his father, Gene Williams, a longtime evangelist and president of Luther Rice Seminary.
“I said, ‘Dad, I need to be saved,’” Williams recalled. “My Dad shared Romans 10:13 with me: Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. He prayed for me and then I prayed, asking Jesus Christ to come into my life and be my Lord and Savior.”
Williams led his first person to Christ, a childhood friend, when he was 9 years old.
Despite his successes in evangelism as a child and teenager, Williams resisted being a preacher.
“My Dad was a preacher and my brother was a preacher,” he said. “I thought God wouldn’t call three in a row – no way.”
But God did.
As an 18-year-old, Williams preached his first sermon on a short-term mission trip to the Philippines. It happened unexpectedly. He was helping set up for a morning worship service for people who worked in the markets and swept the streets.
“They didn’t have a preacher; they needed a preacher,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ll try.’ I preached on John 10:9. I gave an invitation and we had quite a few people saved that day.”
As an evangelism consultant, Williams encourages, equips and trains church leaders. He also challenges them to pray for the Lord to show them how to be effective in their outreach to a lost population.
“I ask them to pray, ‘Lord, help me be creative and innovative,’” he said. “’God, what can I do in my community or my church to reach children or teenagers or young families or single adults or other adults?’”
Despite being in the Bible Belt, Williams said Georgia has large numbers of people who know little about scripture or Christianity. He said they’re generally ready to listen to someone who will patiently guide them.
“A lot of guys tell me, ‘I don’t know how to pray. What do you say? How do you talk to God?’ The truth is there are lot of people who are interested in God, who are not against God, not against the church, not against the Bible, but who don’t understand the gospel. They’ve never been presented the true gospel and they don’t even know where to begin. When you explain that clearly, they’re ready to accept Christ.”
