F.A.I.T.H. Riders
Daytona Bike Week Give-Away!
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Seven days, 1880 heard the gospel and 204 people said Yes to JESUS! Congratulations to Mr. Donald Searls from Creedmoor, NC on winning the 2019 Harley Low Rider during Daytona Bike Week. He came in and spent some time with Shirley Stewart in our tent. He stated multiple times that “I have never won anything in my life”. Ride safe sir, and God bless you!
And it doesn’t stop in Daytona!
Sturgis: Dakota gives outreach to F.A.I.T.H. Riders
Model Year 2019 GAP Photography
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August will be the final time the Dakota Baptist Convention will host its annual evangelism thrust that began at the iconic biker gathering in 2006. But the outreach will continue. In 2020 and beyond, it will be led under the direction of F.A.I.T.H. Riders, a national Christian motorcycle ministry. “I am excited about F.A.I.T.H. Riders taking leadership of the Sturgis evangelism ministry,” DBC Executive Director Garvon Golden told Baptist Press. “They have a source of volunteers nationwide who can pick this ministry up and carry it into the future.” When Jim Hamilton was called in 2003 as the newly-formed Dakota Baptist Convention’s first executive director, he brought an interest in motorcycling and evangelism, and led the staff into doing “something more than just hand out water at the annual event known simply as Sturgis.” Hamilton had seen Texas evangelist Ronnie Hill pair a three-minute evangelistic witness with the chance to win a prize, and decided to offer the possibility of winning a new motorcycle in a drawing for people who listened for three minutes to someone tell how God had changed his or her life.
With financial support provided by the Georgia Baptist Convention, North American Mission Board and other partners, and Hill training volunteers to share their faith in three minutes, the Sturgis evangelism ministry started in 2006. That year, dozens of volunteers shared their stories about 2,900 times, and as a result, 744 people made a profession of faith in Jesus. Over the ministry’s 13 years, 7,878 Sturgis attendees made a profession of faith after hearing about 150 volunteers a year sharing their personal testimonies about 27 times each, for a total of 53,478 Gospel presentations. Each decision has been followed up in the subsequent weeks and months, and some of them for 10 to 12 years. Other facets of the ministry include prayer that starts in October each year for the coming year’s event, culminating in 20 days of focused prayer leading up to the first week of August when the seven-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally begins. “We’ve become convinced God has anointed this ministry,” Golden says on a 2018 video attached to SturgisBikeGiveaway.com. “We’re looking forward to what God is going to do with this ministry in the future.”
After volunteering at Sturgis for five years and learning the “Sturgis model” of evangelistic witnessing, F.A.I.T.H. Riders, which started in 2002 at First Baptist Church in Lakeland, Fla., started a similar ministry at the Daytona Motorcycle Rally. “We minister to a demographic of America most people wouldn’t speak to,” F.A.I.T.H. Riders’ national director Mike Stewart told Baptist Press. “Sturgis and Daytona are the two largest motorcycle rallies in the world. They’ll be keeping us busy for the next year or two.” The 2020 Sturgis rally will be its 80th annual. The 75th rally, in 2015, drew more than 750,000 attendees. “Sturgis was just a burden God placed on my heart, that we weren’t reaching people in our backyard,” Jim Hamilton told Baptist Press about his thinking in 2004. Now serving in Alaska as executive director of Arctic Barnabas Ministries, Hamilton said he is glad F.A.I.T.H. Riders will be leading the motorcycle ministry. “The Dakota Baptist Convention has to do what they think is God’s best for Dakota,” Hamilton continued. “F.A.I.T.H. Riders taking over the Sturgis evangelism event will be very productive for the Lord. The truth is that F.A.I.T.H. Riders is not only the logical choice for Sturgis but the right choice, the best choice … to provide a Gospel witness in a place that desperately needs it.”
To pray or volunteer for or donate to the Sturgis evangelism event this Aug. 2-10, see www.SturgisBikeGiveaway.com.
