Seven members of First Baptist Church, Trussville, recently experienced an unusual opportunity to share the gospel in a foreign setting. The group spent a week in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, with members of Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva (New Life Baptist Church), helping them stage the first international presentation of Judgement House, or La Casa Del Juicio. Judgement House is a walk-through drama presentation of the gospel using real-life situations of death and a dramatization of heaven and of hell.
“We helped do some construction, painting and different things to get ready,” said Chris Chambers, First, Trussville, minister to students. “We were there to assist them in any way we could and to explain to them how Judgement House works.”
Gary Hollingsworth, pastor of First, Trussville, said, “It was the greatest single evangelistic thrust that the church there had ever had in its 12 years of existence. It was a banner event for them in really getting beyond the walls of their church and out into the community.”
The trip came about through First, Trussville, member Jim Carr’s long-term missions-related association with the El Salvador church and through the long relationship of First, Trussville, with Tom Hudgins, founder of Judgement House. From 1989 until 1994, Hudgins served as First, Trussville’s youth minister and established a Judgement House tradition in Trussville that continues to the present.
“Our church has been involved in Judgement House almost since the very beginning, so we felt it was appropriate that we go for prayer support and to support Tom Hudgins,” said Hollingsworth. “We went as much as anything to keep our connection as one of the early churches in Judgement House and to do some behind-the-scenes kinds of things that we could do to help the church get ready.”
Although Judgement House is mostly used in the United States as a Christian Halloween alternative, the San Salvador Judgement House was not planned to coincide with any special event. As Chambers explained, “They really don’t have a big problem like we do as far as haunted houses and things like that.”
The chief functions of the Trussville contingent, according to Chambers, were to put finishing touches on sets and then help minister to the crowds of gospel-hungry San Salvadorans who came to the presentations. On an average day, the group arrived at the church at 8:30 a.m. and worked on sets, hung advertising banners outside or cleaned rooms to be used for counseling.
They spent part of one day visiting a school where, through interpreters, they shared the gospel and invited the schoolchildren to Judgement House.
Several afternoons, they walked around the area handing out flyers.
“There was no one down there who said no to a flyer, and everyone thanked you when you handed them one. It was a different attitude,” said Chambers, noting that the advertising efforts paid off.
On the first night of La Casa Del Juicio, people lined the street for about a block with about 50 more milling around the churchyard and about 75 more waiting inside the church to go through the rooms. The San Salvador Judgement House lasted seven nights, with the Trussville group participating in four.
“After those first four nights, 329 had been saved,” said Chambers, “which is more than most churches here in the States. God just kept bringing more and more people every night.” Later reports said that by the end of the week, more than 600 people had come to Christ.
And the moving salvation stories that came out of the trip are something the Trussville group said it will long share and never forget. Three reporters and several members of the country’s two national soccer teams were among those who accepted Christ as Savior.
“It’s always exciting to see what God is doing in another part of the world and that people are still responding to the same old gospel story, no matter how it’s told or in what language it’s told,” Hollingsworth said. “Just to be a part of seeing so many people come to Christ can’t do anything but change, challenge, and encourage you. It was also good for me to be able to come back and share with our people here in Trussville how we can be a part of reaching the world by helping with events like this.”
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