A question

I have a question for those following this blog:

Would you be willing to lead an effort to go door to door to all of the households in your zip code?

please post a comment or contact me with your response.

Fifty Five more houses

I just got in from covering 55 more houses in my neighborhood. You could break up the 55 houses into three groups. The first group, I did by myself. The second group, Pastor Tony was with me. The third group my youngest son was with me. Along the route we talked with several mormons and several hindu's. I also had a very long one on one dialog with an agnostic who had grown up in a Christian household. Pastor Tony and I spoke with a Hindu man who after we shared the Gospel with him, said that he had never heard the Gospel before. Pastor Tony was really amazed that people right here in the neighborhood have never heard about Jesus and the free gift of eternal life. I also had the pleasure of speaking with several born again believers who could clearly articulate how to become a Christian!

Today I visited 55 houses. I collected 62 food items for MetroCrest Social Services. We gathered 12 prayer requests. And I had the opportunity to share the Gospel one on one 16 times!

As Pastor Tony, my wife and I talked, I came up with an analogy that I'd like to share. It is a comparison between a shotgun and a rifle. Shotguns spray their ammunition out over a large area. Some of the spray hits something. Some does not. In comparison, a rifle has a scope and is very precise at hitting a particular target. This is the analogy to show what door to door evangelism is about. Door to door is the rifle, while a witnessing event like handing out tracts at a sporting event or even a mall is the shot gun. I personally participate in both types of witnessing events. However, when God called me to go door to door, it was precisely for this reason. Some people may never come out of their house and go to the mall (or where ever we may happen to be witnessing). So, for those people we need a targeted approached. That is where door to door comes in.

If you have not yet considered or started going door to door, I encourage you to give it a try. Please check the other blog posts here and the door to door section of the Bezeugen web site for more information on door to door Evangelism.

Evangelism Linebacker on Door to Door Evangelism

I find that many people don't get started doing door to door evangelism for the same reason they have not gotten started doing evangelism in the first place. This video addresses this about 50 seconds in you will see two college students going door to door...

The reality is that people are fearful. Fearful of the unknown. Who (or what) is behind that next door. Fear of what to say! What if they ask me a question I don't know the answer too? Fear of humiliation! What if someone I know or work with lives here? 
All of these are natural fears. But, we must over come them. Peoples eternal destinies are at stake. Jesus has commanded us to share the Gospel with others. Our three step plan makes it easy to ask people a few questions and share the Gospel with them. Here is what we do:

1. Ring the door bell
2. Tell them we have three reasons we have come to the door
3. The first is to collect food for a food drive
4. The second is to gather prayer requests for a prayer meeting
5. The third is to do a spiritual inventory of the neighborhood. Then ask, if they believe in God and if they believe in heaven and hell and how to get to heaven.
6. Lead towards the good person test using The Way of the Master Method.

You can do it! You can overcome your fears and go and knock on a few doors. Let me know how it goes. I plan to put together a map showing where people are doing door to door very soon. So please get started and then send me your location so you can be on the map when it is released!

For more information on door to door evangelism, please see the other posts on this blog and the door to door section of the Bezeugen web site. If you would like training in the Way of the Master method of Evangelism to help you get started, then pleased start with our As You Go checklist and then contact me if you need further assistance.

Back to the Neighborhood

Last week I wrote about the seminar and going door to door at Empowerment Christian Center in Farmers Branch. A week after the initial training and neighborhood witnessing, the church invited me back to lead the team into the neighborhood again. They were having a weekend long Harvest Outreach and had slated Saturday morning to reach out to the neighborhood. When I arrived at the church at 9:45AM, there was no one there. We were supposed to start at 10AM and still, no one was there. I tried to reach the pastor and got no response to a text message. I sat in my car waiting and praying. Some of the people had been a little late the week before. So, I was not overly concerned. Finally, I thought, I'll just get started by myself. I'll leave a note on the door to tell them where I am and they can come join me. Just then one of the women from the church arrived. She told me that the pastor was detained because he and his wife had had to take their youngest son to the Emergency Room during the night. So, she and I prayed and then headed out to the neighborhood across the street from the church.

We went to about four houses, gathered a few cans of food and a prayer request. We gave out a couple of tracts. But a couple of the people were not home. As we made our way up the street, the pastor arrived in his van. He needed to run by the church to get something and then said he would come back to join us. We continued up the street. When he came back, he had FIVE others with him! Two were from Kenya. One was a pastor from another church in the area. But, aside from the pastor, they had not been at the training the week before.

So, we had Evangelism training at the side of the road!

I pulled out a WDJD/Craft card and explained the Way of the Master. For those not familiar with this card, you can order them from Living Waters. They are perfectly sized to carry in your wallet. This is wonderful for people that are newly learning Way of the Master so that they can carry them with them, refer to them to refresh their mind about the method and even hold it in their hand as they have a conversation if necessary. For example, while witnessing door to door, one could put the card on the clipboard and easily refer to it inconspicuously while witnessing to someone one to one at their door.

I explained WDJD to the group. Then I turned the card around and explained the Craft side of the card. If you are not familiar with these concepts, then please contact me and we can talk about doing an Evangelism Seminar in your church.

Once I explained the method we use to share the Law and the Gospel, I then spent a few minutes explaining our three fold method of going door to door, asking for food donations, asking for prayer requests and then taking a spiritual inventory with the purpose to share the Gospel using the method we just discussed.

Everyone in the group said they were ready to go. I promoted Pastor Tony and Hilde to team leaders. I lead a third group. Then we split the other five people into our three groups. One group when back down the other side of the street that Hilde and I had covered. The other two groups took each side of the street as we continued up the street.

The three groups continued door to door for about an hour. By then we had two carts full of food, about a dozen prayer requests, had shared the Gospel one on one nearly twenty times and had visited over fifty houses! We went back to the church and prayed over the requests. Pastor and I prayed for the church members to have a burden for the lost and continue this task. Would you please join in that prayer?

Resources for Door to Door

So you have decided to start witnessing door to door in your neighborhood and are wondering what you need to get started. We are using a three pronged approach to witnessing door to door:

• doing a food drive
• gathering prayer requests
• taking a "spiritual inventory" for the purpose of sharing the Gospel

I thought I'd make a list of the items that are useful.

Cart
I take a cart with me when I go witnessing door to door in the neighborhood. The primary purpose of the cart is to carry the food that is collected for the food drive. However, the cart also holds additional tracts, Bibles, books and plastic bags to give people to put their food donation in. Don't forget to put in a bottle of water for each member of your team, especially if it is hot. These are available at Staples.  The cart folds up for easy storage when not in use.

Plastic Bags
When asking for food donations, sometimes it is handed to provide the person with a plastic bag to put their donation in. Some people will have their own plastic bags handy. However, some will not. My wife saves the plastic bags from when she shops at the grocery store. I take these bags with me when I go door to door. When I approach each door, I bring one bag up to the door with me. That way if the person would like a bag, I can simply hand them one.

Clipboard
I carry a clip board with me. You can get a clip board at any number of stores. This one at Office Max is less than $5. On the clip board I put the following items:

• Several sheets of blank paper for taking notes, tracking the number of houses and one on ones, etc
• Several prayer request cards. In a future post, I will provide you with the prayer request cards that we use.
• Several copies of the information sheet from MetrcoCrest Social Services about the food drive. If you are in the Dallas Metroplex, this sheet may be useful to you. Otherwise, ask your local food pantry for a similar sheet.

Tracts

Since it is our primary objective to share the Gospel with each household in the city, we must carry a supply of Gospel tracts with us when we go door to door. We have decided to use the Good News / Bad News tract that we developed at Bezeugen Ministries. 

This tracts contains a number of scripture references on each side. This tract is the size of a business card with good news on one side and bad news on the other. The card provides links to our outreach web site with additional information.

You can use any tract that you like. We decided to use this one because it eliminates cultural boundaries that may be found with many tracts. So, if we leave a tract on the door and we don't know who the person is, we may not otherwise know which tract to leave that is well suited for them.

Business Cards

We have printed business cards for many of the people involved with our ministry. If we have a conversation with someone and they would like to contact us, then we will leave them with a business card which provides our contact information. If you make business cards, then I recommend at least providing your name, email address and phone number. Our also include the web site of our ministry. Then on the back our business cards provide some of the more popular links within the site that people may be looking for. This way, let's say someone is looking for a church, we can point them to a link on the back of our business card which points them directly to the section of the web site that contains that information.

Bibles

It is helpful to to have Bibles and scripture portions to hand out to people that may not have any. We buy our Bibles from BiblicaDirect. We have found that we can get good pricing when buying these per case. We have used and recommend the following resources:

• Gospel of John - You can choose two different covers. These can be purchased in bulk for 30 cents each.
• Pocket New Testament - The cover comes in four colors. There are actually less expensive options, but these are very nice because they fit in a shirt pocket or the pocket of your jeans to have them with you. They run $1.60 each when purchased by the case.
• NIV Outreach Bible - Choose from five attractive covers. These run $2.35 each when ordered by the case.

In addition to these Bibles, I have found that Christian Book Distributors offers an ESV New Testament for 79 cents a copy when you order at least 10. This is a wonderful price. The format is slightly larger than the Pocket New Testament above, but it is certainly an inexpensive ESV option to try. We will likely order some of these once we use up the New Testaments we have already purchased.

Booklets

As with any witnessing conversation, it is often good to have resources to provide the person that you have witnessed too. Two resources that I carry with me are:

• Why Christianity? - this is a wonderful resource to provide people who practice other religions, especially if they practice Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam. 
• Scientific Facts in the Bible - this resources is wonderful to give to intellectuals and atheists. One time when I was witnessing, I actually had a teen aged girl say, "it's not like you can prove any science from the Bible." I said, "oh, yeah, would you like to read this?" and handed her one of these booklets. She started reading it immediately.

Books

If finances allow, you may also like to stock a few books that you can provide to people who have more questions and interest. A few of my favorite books to give out in these circumstances are:

• How Good is Good Enough
• The Case for Christ
• One Heartbeat Away

There are many other wonderful resources available. These are the basic set that I use when witnessing, especially door to door.

A time to pray

I was riding my bike and reflecting on the Ecclesiates 3 reading from Project Ezra last weekend.  Consider the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
 ²a time to be born, and a time to die;a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³a time to kill, and a time to heal;a time to break down, and a time to build up; ⁴a time to weep, and a time to laugh;a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ⁵a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ⁶a time to seek, and a time to lose;a time to keep, and a time to cast away; ⁷a time to tear, and a time to sew;a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ⁸a time to love, and a time to hate;a time for war, and a time for peace.

As I rode, I was praying to God. Passing by so many houses in the City of Carrollton, I realize there are many doors yet to knock on. Well, actually, most of the houses remain. I've been to a little over 300 out of 40,000 (or so) houses. From this, there is obviously a time to knock on doors and a time to refrain from knocking. Why refrain? To pray for the soil!

So, not only can I get some much needed exercise, but I can use the time to pray for the city. Would you join me in praying for the City of Carrollton? Here are some of the things that I have been praying for:

• That God would make the soil fertile so that when we knock on doors the seeds will take root
• That God would raise up workers to go into the field with me to share the Gospel door to door. If you live in or near Carrollton and would like to go door to door to reach the city, please contact me.
  
• That there is sufficient time available to share the Gospel door to door
• For wisdom on other ideas on bringing the Gospel to the city. Specifically, I need guidance on plans to do "revivals" at apartment complexes as a way to bring the Gospel there.
• I am still praying for a good location in Carrollton to do Project Ezra. Currently, I do Project Ezra each week at a park in Plano, which is the next town from Carrollton.The park itself actually borders with Carrollton. But, if possible, I'd like to find a public place in Carrollton where there are people to hear the Words of Project Ezra and the associated open air preaching.
• Pray for Godly leaders - major, city council, police, fire department
  

Perhaps you can pray these things for your city too. Post a comment below with other prayer requests for Carrollton or your city.

BTW, the city is extending the greenbelt bike path. It comes almost to my house now. What a great ride. I don't know who at city hall is responsible for extending this bike path, but you have my thanks and appreciation!

So that you can pray over Carrollton, please see the map below:


View Larger Map

Seminar and door to door

On Saturday we taught the Basic Evangelism Training Seminar to a group of believers at Empowerment Christian Center in Farmers Branch, TX and then took them door to door in the neighborhood across the street from the church.

When we went door to door down the street, we split into two teams. One went down one side of the street. The other went down the other side of the street. At the first house an woman answered the door. She did not speak a word of English. I was thinking, "wow, this is going to be tough." But she went and got her teenaged daughter who, in between text messages, would translate between me and her mom. She told her mom that we had come to collect food for the food pantry. They went off and came back with more food than would fill two of the plastic grocery sacks that we had brought with us! I then said, "the second reason we are here is that we are having a prayer meeting, and wondering if there is any specific way we can pray for you." The girl looked puzzled, translated, then said, "no, that's ok."  Eventually the father joined the conversation. The father could speak some English, but it was broken and very hard to understand. So, I said, "the third reason we are hear is we are doing a spiritual inventory of the neighborhood. For instance do you believe in God?" Yes, came the answer. "Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?" Yes, again. "How do you get to heaven?" She replied, "by doing good things!" So, I asked if she considered herself to be a good person. We had a good long conversation from there. She eventually told me that they believed in a religion from Asia called Jainism. Unfortunately, I was not familiar with it, but I was still able to reason with her from the scriptures, from logical thinking about the fact that there must be one thing that happens when a person dies, and the like. I offered her a "Why Christianity?" tract and she said that she would read it. As we walked away from this house, the two ladies from the church that were with me were absolutely amazed at the beliefs of this family and so concerned that they were going to hell.

We moved on to the next house on the street. As we went down the block we talked to a Catholic who after hearing the Law and admitting she would go to hell for breaking it, excused herself from the conversation. At another house when I asked, "do you believe in God" she responded, "no, and I don't care to participate in your survey" and closed the door on us. At another house as soon as we asked about "spiritual things", the woman closed the door.

As we went from house to house the women fro the church that had just been trained got up the courage to ask the first two questions about collecting food and the prayer request. Then they would hand off the conversation to me to do the spiritual inventory. Yet as we moved down the street and realized that each house was filled with people going to hell. They were more and more concerned.

Finally, at one house when we asked how he was going to get to heaven, the man said, "only by trust in the Lord Jesus Christ!" Yeah! This man had six children and ten grandchildren. And he was teaching his grandchildren about the Lord. We prayed with him and his granddaughter.

We finsihed going down our side of the street and then meet up with our group that had been going down the other side of the street. We compared notes. They counted two Christians at one house. And we also counted one Christian household. Pastor Tony told me later, "surely our eyes have been opened" to the needs of the community. We went back to the church and prayed over the prayer requests that we had gathered and for the salvation of all the people that we meet that are not saved.

We plan to meet again next Saturday and do some more door to door in that neighborhood.

Now it's your turn. Why not schedule a Basic Evangelism Training Seminar at your church, small group, youth group or retreat and then start going door to door around your own neighborhood?

Ambassador's Alliance Radio Interview

Last week I was interviewed by Tony Miano on Amabassador's Alliance radio about door to door methods that I am using in Carrollton. I invite you to click the link, listen to the show and then post your comments. The interview begins about 8 minutes into the audio. Let me know what you think.

The links referenced in the interview are:

• BLOG (this site) - door to door evangelism blog: CarrolltonForChrist.blogspot.com
• Bezeugen Ministries - our ministry web site: www.bezeugen.org
• After Life Catalog - online Gospel presentation: www.AfterLifeCatalog.com
• Tract Club - enroll online, get 30 Gospel tract for free per month: www.bezeugen.org/BTC/BTC.html
• Bezeugen BLOG - periodic updates on the ministry and witnessing "as you go": bezeugen.blogspot.com