"It’s the sort of thing you read about in Acts," reveals evangelist Matt Timms,,,
A double-decker bus, an outreach tour around Cornwall and a mighty move of God. It’s been a remarkable summer for Matt Timms and his team.
“We’ve had testimony after testimony of people wanting to know more about Jesus. We’ve seen baptisms, healings, just crazy, crazy stuff. It’s the sort of thing you read about in Acts and we’re like, ‘Wow, this is incredible!’,” says Matt Timms.
Matt is speaking to Direction in August, in the middle of a month-long outreach tour around Cornwall on a double-decker bus that has been nothing short of miraculous.
He is no stranger to outdoor evangelism, having run drive-in services at Wave House church in Newquay last summer when the pandemic put paid to indoor meetings.
But this year’s tour came about when Matt felt the Lord prompt him to do something new.
“He started speaking to us again, saying, ‘Take the church outside. I want you to do a Days of Light tour and take the bus into five locations in Cornwall, for three days in each.”
Matt and the team readied their bus – a 1977 Leyland Atlantean, converted into a mobile community outreach space, and decorated with a wave to symbolise revival and a lion representing Jesus as the lion of Judah – and they set off.
At each location, a prophetic worship team have ministered each day, while other teams run prayer and healing tents, street evangelism and kids and family ministry. Matt’s “Sovereign” bus ministry team has joined forced with local churches and organisations such as YWAM to do this.
ASTONISHING
The way God has moved has been astonishing, he says. “In St Austell we had about 20 people become followers of Jesus and did about seven baptisms.
“In Perranporth, we had about 15 people respond to Jesus and baptised nine people.
“And in Newquay, we had over 30 people give their hearts to Jesus and we did ten baptisms.
“We’ve had miraculous healings where people’s toes and scoliosis of the spine have been healed – people were bouncing around afterwards.
“We’ve had people encountering the presence of God during the worship, being in floods of tears and giving their hearts to Jesus then coming back the very next day to be baptised.”
He recalls how in Perranporth, the third location on the route, he met some non-Christian men walking along a footpath who broke out into a spontaneous chorus of ‘Holy, holy, holy’.
“We asked, ‘do you want to know Jesus?’ They said yes and gave their lives to him. Then we asked if they wanted to get baptised and they did. One guy was baptised and filled with the Spirit all in one go, speaking in tongues and everything.”
BAPTISED
In the same location, 14- and 16-year-old cousins chose to follow Christ and were baptised the same day.
“We told them, ‘We’ve got some baptisms at three o’clock, do you want to join us? They did, but then on the way there their mum came up and said, ‘We need God in our lives, can we give our hearts to Jesus and get baptised too?’
“So we started walking to the beach with three people to baptise, then a bunch of people give their lives to Jesus on the way and suddenly we’re baptising nine instead.”
The team saw God move at the next stop too. They set their bus up in a park in St Austell where they discovered two notorious murders had taken place four years ago.
“We just started to worship Jesus,” Matt says. “For the first two days there was a really heavy atmosphere and the weather was bad. But on the last day the sun came out and the atmosphere shifted.
“We had parents telling us that no one had taken their kids to this park in four years, but that day there were hundreds of people gathered there and we gave away 250 burgers.
“Homeless guys were coming up to us who would normally be really aggressive, but there was such an atmosphere shift of peace. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s been fantastic to see. All we’re doing, literally, is rocking up with a bus and worshipping Jesus, praying and sharing the gospel with anyone the Lord sends along. He’s doing the rest.
“Prophetically, I believe the bus represents what we see God doing as the church is mobilised to go and share the gospel.
“The presence of God is really here with us. It’s been really, really powerful.”
From Direction Magazine issue 230.
