In our last article we considered six vital reasons to include more questions in our open-air preaching. We saw how using questions in preaching follows a Biblical pattern and how they are essential for gaining and holding attention. But when is the right time to ask a question? And what kind of questions should we ask? Over the next three articles, I’m going to give concrete examples of how we can effectively deploy questions at critical moments.
Three types of opening questions
In fishing with a net, you let down the net over a wide area, hoping to catch as many fish as possible in one go. We should use questions at the beginning of our message to cast the net as widely as possible. Your first few sentences must grab the attention of the ‘man in the street’. They need to know that you have something worth listening to. They need to know that you understand them. And they need to know that you are speaking directly to them as an individual, not just a nebulous, indefinite group of people ‘out there’ in the city centre.
There are three types of questions I have seen used effectively at the beginning of an open-air message.
Title questions
Firstly, there are title questions. If you head over to the open-air visuals of the OAM website, you will notice many of the open-air messages are titled with a question, such as:
- What can fix a broken world?
- Who is Jesus?
- Is there life after death?
- Are you good enough to go to heaven?
The content of the open-air message progressively answers the title question. You can refer to these at the beginning, but you can also return to the title-question each time you make a point. Ensure that you spend some time at the beginning establishing the question.
For example, for the first question in the list above, you might talk generally about the evidence of sin in the world in broken marriages, broken relationships, broken bodies, broken minds and broken wills inclined toward sin. Then you can ask the question… what has the power to fix the mess the world is in?
Ten years ago, a man in Basingstoke heard an OAM evangelist preaching a message on the question ‘Are you good enough to go to heaven?’. The man initially walked away but later returned, intrigued by the question, and went home with a gospel of John. After reading the gospel, he believed in the Lord. We only heard about his conversion recently.
Apologetics questions
Secondly, there are apologetics questions. These are the kind of questions and objections we frequently receive from unbelievers. Many people have heard sceptics use questions and objections about suffering, morality, ‘contradictions’ in the Bible, and science as if they are the final ‘nail in the coffin’ of Christianity. One way to grab attention is to show people that we are not afraid to tackle such questions and answer them plainly from the Word of God. We might say, ‘People often ask “If God is good, why do bad things happen?” Does the Bible answer that question? Yes it does!’. Then you can base your message on that.
I often find that personal conversation is a rich source of such questions. I will sometimes begin an open-air message by relating a personal conversation I had earlier in the open-air. For example, ‘I was just chatting to a man who said to me that the Bible was made up to control the masses. Perhaps you think the same? Let me tell you three reasons why that certainly cannot be true’. The ears of people prick up as they become intrigued as to how you responded.
Quiz questions
Thirdly, some open-air preachers have used generic quiz questions that invite interaction for several minutes at the beginning of the message. One talk, recently produced by Andy Little, is entitled ‘What comes next?’. It invites people to guess the next letters in acronyms and phrases. Then it challenges the listener with the greatest question: ‘What comes after death?’. This helps to build interest and then allows you to present the gospel naturally. Others have created open-air visuals that begin with general-knowledge quiz questions relating to Easter or Christmas to engage people, then present the message of the incarnation, cross, and resurrection.
I have seen these kinds of messages effective in engaging large groups of young people. Using such a talk in Weymouth during an evening open-air, around 25 young people stopped and engaged all the way through the message, hearing a clear gospel challenge at the end. All of them went away with a gospel of John.
There are two caveats with such messages:
- Don’t get stuck on the initial questions and fail to progress to a clear gospel presentation. Questions are the bait, not the catch. They bridge between the things of the world and the gospel. If people stop, move through these questions at a good pace so you don’t lose people by the time you get to the gospel.
- Ensure that there is a natural progression from the general questions through to the gospel message. They need to be connected in their theme to the main application of the message. For example, a message that has images of famous people and invites the public to rank them in order of ‘goodness’ leads naturally to the challenge of ‘Where are you on the scale? And where do you fall on God’s scale of goodness?’.
Conclusion
How we begin our open-air preaching is vital. Using questions effectively can be the difference between preaching to no-one and preaching to a group of listeners. How can you employ the three types of questions above in your next open-air message?
If you want to grow in your preaching, join our ‘Teach and Go’ evangelism training weekend in Liverpool in May 2026.