Feb. 11, 2008 | By Paul F. South
 

NEW ORLEANS – In the wee, small hours of the morning, the whole wide world is fast asleep. But not in New Orleans, not at Carnival time.
 

And not for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary alumnus Emerson Wiles. For him, the nighttime is the right time to share the life-changing message of Jesus Christ during the Mardi Gras season.

Wiles, a pastor on the big island of Hawaii at Waikoloa Baptist Church, has brought the gospel message of hope to the streets of carnival New Orleans for more than two decades.
 

Between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., on the nights leading up to Mardi Gras day (Feb. 5 this year), Wiles and his team walking the streets of the French Quarter, sharing the Gospel message with the multitudes that descend on the Crescent City for Carnival.
 

While Wiles’ message hasn’t changed, his methods have.
 

“It took me 15 years to figure out how to do it,” he said. “The first 15 years, we came with crosses, big ol’ crosses. In my mind, there are only two responses to the cross: You either love it or you hate it. So we spent more time arguing than we did witnessing.”
 

Wiles then read a book that transformed his thinking, and his tactics. Until he read, “Out of Their Faces and Into Their Shoes: How to Understand Spiritually Lost People and Give Them Directions to God” by John Kramp, Wiles had been what he called “a very condemning witness.”
 

“(The book) taught me that lost people do what lost people do because they’re lost,” Wiles said. “Not because they hate God, but because they don’t know any better.”
 

Now, Wiles method proves the power of God’s message. Lives are being changed, in part, due to a blank sign.
 

“People get curious when you’re holding up an empty sign,” Wiles said. “I tell people, ‘That was my life before Jesus came in.’”
 

The signs are having an impact, sparking curiosity in a way oversized crosses did not.
 

“We don’t jam anything down anybody’s throat,” Wile said. “We don’t stop anybody. They come and ask us what we’re doing. A lot of times they don’t like what we’re doing, but they like the way we do it. It’s just ways to witness without turning people off.”
 

Wiles, a December 1981 graduate of NOBTS, pastured in Tennessee for 18 years, first at Friendship Baptist Church in Culleoka, then at FBC Fayetteville. His move to Hawaii was the fulfillment of westward call Emerson first sensed in seminary.
 
But even thousands of miles away, Wiles never forgot New Orleans. He began annual visits during Carnival season in 1985, as part of a street evangelism ministry. He has missed only one year since. While in the city, the team worked from Vieux Carre Baptist Church, located a block from Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter.
 

“Mardi Gras is supposedly the biggest party in the world, where you can come from any place in the world and do anything you want to do and (the attitude is) ‘it’s OK, because everybody else is doing it.’ It’s probably the last place you’d expect to find Jesus.”
 

Unlike his past effort, with condemnation as its cornerstone, love is at the center of Wiles’ street evangelism.

“We don’t want to condemn people,” Emerson said. “It’s the Holy Spirit that brings condemnation. We just want to tell people about Christ.”
 

For Wiles, the trips to New Orleans are a part of God’s call on his life.
 

“God called me to be a fisher of men,” Wiles said. “God called me to go where there’s fish. There are plenty of fish in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.”
 

Wiles and his ministry team don’t keep a tally of how many are converted. “That’s not our role,” he said. And they are confronted by those who see the Mardi Gras madnesss swirling around them, and wonder if it is not wasted effort.

“I had a guy come up to me and say, ‘Don’t you feel like a failure? Look at all that’s going on around you.You’re not making any difference.’”
 

Wiles’ response is simple: “I’m not a failure. Jesus told me to go and tell people about Him. That’s what I’ve come here to do. How can I be a failure if that’s what I’m doing? We don’t go around counting scalps, counting how many people received Christ. We just spent five or six hours a day, telling people about Jesus.”
 

NOBTS, with its emphasis on practical ministry, was a “wonderful experience,” Wiles said. “I learned more on the streets and doing practical ministry. It was a wonderful experience. It was a great training ground. That’s why I came (to NOBTS). It was a great place to learn how to tell people about Jesus.”
 

According to Wiles, the Mardi Gras experience has sharpened his church’s ministry in Hawaii.
  

“I’m training my church members to (share the gospel),” he said. “If you can come on the streets of New Orleans and tell …a total stranger about Christ, then you can go back home and talk to your neighbors, your banker, your doctor, your lawyer. It makes it easier to share the Gospel. If you can share at Mardi Gras, doing it at home is a piece of cake.”
 

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