April 27, 2024
BOWMAN, Ga. — A spiritual movement that began in Georgia in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing in Bowman where 60 people made salvation decisions at a Wednesday evening wild game dinner.
“It was incredible,” said Chris Pritchett, pastor at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church where some 550 people had tickets for the meal that included bison, duck, wild boar, rabbit, and alligator, followed by a gospel presentation by Chuck McAlister, the longtime host of the AdventureBound Outdoors TV show.
Similar instances of mass salvations have become almost routine since the pandemic subsided in Georgia, a Bible Belt state where more than 21,000 new believers were baptized in the past year.
Steve Foster, an evangelism consultant for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said the state has seen a more than 30% increase in baptisms over the past year and a more than 90% increase since 2020.
McAlister, now a South Carolina pastor, has led thousands of men to Christ at wild game dinners over the past four decades. He typically takes the stage in his hunting clothes, a 16-gauge shotgun across his shoulder, telling hunting tales, fostering a connection with the men, then clearly and simply explaining the gospel.
“These are challenging times that call for unique strategies to reach men,” McAlister said. “The day of simply expecting the unchurched to come to our churches to accept Jesus are over. We must go to them. Jesus said that He would make us fishers of men. That implies, as all good fishermen know, that we must know the bait that attracts men. If done correctly, a wild game dinner can be the bait that attracts unchurched men who love the outdoors but would never think of setting foot in a church.”
Pritchett said he is entirely transparent with the outdoorsmen who come to his wild game dinners where guns and other outdoor equipment are given away in a drawing.
“I tell them, ‘our greatest desire is for you to hear the gospel, not win a gun,’” he said.
Counting 150 volunteers from the church, overall attendance was about 700 at the Bowman event where they heard McAlister explain the gospel “without the distraction of a church vocabulary that they do not understand.”
“It is amazing how well it works,” McAlister said. “Jesus was accused of being a friend to sinners by the religious establishment of His day and of entering too easily into their world. We have simply chosen to do that which we think Jesus would have done. The effectiveness of this strategy is consistently demonstrated in the numbers of people we see coming to Jesus in churches of various sizes and in a diversity of locations.”
