sidewalk evangelism

So, the other day I was walking around to area businesses, trying to get them to post flyers for a free event coming up that I'm helping to advertise. I had just finished in a coffee shop and the wind was blowing wildly. Some dude was chasing some wayward papers and I joked with him, saying something like, "Man, the wind's wicked today, isn't it?" (brilliant, eh?) Anyway, he said something in the affirmative and then said something like, "I want to invite you to a blahblahblah." I didn't hear the rest of his sentence and still don't know exactly what he said, even though I asked him at least two more times. Well, long story short, he started talking about how he moved out here, didn't know anything about this area, became a Christian and it changed his life." Ugh, I think to myself...how did I get sucked in to this? I was REALLY tempted to just say, "No thanks, I'm an atheist." but I was worried because I was wearing company gear and he had involved another random person by this point. I'm always more careful about what I say and do when I can be associated with the company that I work for.

A few points about this encounter:

Why wouldn't he have said clearly "a bible study" or "revival" or whatever it was that he was trying to invite me to? I honestly feel he was being purposefully deceitful, lest I walk away while it was less awkward to do so. Had I heard him clearly the first time, I would have gracefully made some excuse about being on company time or having an appointment to get to or something similar. But...the cynical part of me thinks he has been taught (or learned) that he will get better results if he doesn't come right out and say what he's up to.

I've been struggling with this experience because in a way, he and I were doing the same thing. Oh, I've come up with a lot of reasons in my head of how our two efforts were different, but am I just looking for differences? Both of our events were (presumably) free. Both were of some interest to the general public (again, presumably.) Would a community event intended to educate people about the environment and a revival be essentially the same? I'm convinced that my efforts were significantly less creepy and deceitful, but I'm still struck by the juxtaposition of what happened to me with what I was doing at the same time. What do you think?