Five suggestions

As I was going door to door this weekend, I was praying for some helpful tips that I could share about going door to door. God revealed five things that I can share with you.

1. Stand Back From the Door
When I ring the door bell, I like to stand back 4-6 feet from the door while I wait for someone to answer. This is helpful because that way, I am not right in someones face when they open the door. In addition, in many houses, it allows the person to look out from a window in a room near the door to see who is standing at their door.

2.Watch for signage
When approaching a house, watch out for No Tresspassing and No Solicitation signs. Solicitation is typically used in conjunction with selling something or asking for money. Since we are doing neither of these things, I don't actually think we are violating a No Solicitation sign. However, most people that put up such signs do so so that no one will bother them. It is my experience that they get "bent out of shape" by knocking on the door. For this reason, I choose to bypass houses that have No Soliciting signs posted. I will pray a prayer over the household as I pass by. I have noticed that some No Soliciting signs are posted fairly inconspicuously. So you really have to look for them sometimes. A couple of times, I've run the door beel without noticing the sign. Fortunately, when I saw the sign, I just left and it turned out no one was home anyway. I think obeying the No Tresspassing sign is obvious.

3. If in doubt ... ask if it is a good time
A woman comes to the door and looks like she is not feeling too well. I say, "hi, is this a good time to talk for a minute?" She says, "no." I hand her a tract and tell her to have a nice day. The bottom line is we need to be sensitive to the fact that they may not be able to talk right then.

4. Ask for their parents
Sometimes a child will answer the door. In this case, I'll ask, "is your mom or dad here." If they say no, then I give them a tract to give to their parents. If they say yes, then I wait to speak with the parent. Now, I only apply this rule when the child is say less then 14 or so. With teen agers, I'll ask them for prayer requests and talk to them about spiritual things.

5. Recognize when it is time to leave
In Matthew 13, Jesus teaches about four types of soil. When we are planting seed in good soil it is fairly obvious. Likewise, we need to pay attention to the leading of the Holy Spirit and recognize when we are spreading seed in the rocky places. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to spending an hour (or more) at one house talking with someone. I've actually had some long conversations with people while going door to door. But, if the conversation is going no where, and they are not interested at all in talking about the things of God, then I will hand them a tract, excuse myself and move on to the next house. On one particular occassion, the man had made up a god to suit himself. He had totally dismissed the idea that any god could judge and send people to hell. Then he began telling me that it was not appropriate to have a spiritual conversation in front of his two children (1 and 4 years old). I pointed out that the Bible says to have the faith of these little children. At that he said something to the effect of, "I am not going to discuss my beliefs with a stranger." Interestingly, we had already been talking about these things for 5-10 minutes. I handed him a tract, thanked him for his time and then left. Finally, I added him to the prayer list for salvation!

Statistics
Here are the updated statistics on reaching Carrollton for Christ.
Houses visited: 337
One on One conversations: 90
Prayer Requests: 56
Food items collected: 199

Well, that's it for now. I hope these suggestions are helpful.

The Cross

It has been over a week since my last update. Due to some rain and a very busy schedule both personally and with some other ministry events, we have not been able to do any more door to door since the last update. I hope to cover some more houses on Saturday morning.

We did try another way to reach Carrollton for Christ by standing with a cross at the corner of Old Denton and George Bush on Monday evening. You can read about this in the Bezeugen Blog. As we continue to consider various ways to reach the city for Christ, it seems that this will be a good thing to include.

Your continued prayers for our door to door ministry and reaching Carrollton for Christ are appreciated.

Mapping Carrollton

The City of Carrollton (Texas) has approximately 40,000 houses. I am not sure if this includes apartments or not. Actually, the total number does not matter too much to me. I wanted a way to be able to visually tract which of the houses I have been too. I was able to get a city map from city hall for free. I simply looked up the city web site and then sent a request for a map. They mailed it to me and I had it in about two days. Here is a picture of the city map. The pen at the top is pointing to an area that I highlighted that shows the portion I have covered so far.

I wanted the map of the whole site to pray over the city and also to be able to see in one shot the whole project. However, when going door to door, a zoomed in map is easier to deal with. For this purpose, I went to google maps, zoomer in on the area where I am working and then printed out the map. Then I use a highlighter to track the areas where I have been. This map shows the area that is pointe to by the pen in the top picture:

The push pin is my house. I started with neighbors on each side and am now working out from my house.

If you are planning to go door to door in your city, then these ideas to get a map from city hall and from google maps may be helpful to tract the progress as you go throughout the city.

Please continue to pray for me as I go door to door in Carrollton. I am talking with the Pastor of a church here in town who has indicated he may be interested in helping with this project. Due to schedules, we plan to meet up in early October.

A new blog for Carrollton

I decided to create a separate blog for the Carrollton for Christ effort of Bezeugen Ministries. This makes it easier for people to follow the effort without having to go through the other updates on the Bezeugen Ministries Blog. Feel free to subscribe to both blogs!

On Saturday we covered 13 more houses, had 6 more one on one conversations, gathered 4 more prayer requests and 2 more cans of food. With these, the total counts now stand as:

Houses visited:	296
One on One conversations:	83
Prayer Requests:	50
Items of food collected:	174

I've also been praying about other ways to reach Carrollton for Christ and researching these ways. If anyone has experience with these and can provide insight on their effectiveness please let me know. Some things I'm considering:

• Open Air revival at the park
• standing on a street corner with a sign or cross
• settign up a prayer table at a local wal-mart - I'll note here that although I was told the company policy allowed this, it appears the policy has changed. Two of the four wal-marts in or surrounding Carrollton have told me that they no longer allow this
• purchasing a billboard to proclaim the Gospel
• finding a place within Carrollton to do Project Ezra. Currently I do Project Ezra at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano which borders Carrollton.

To read past entries about this effort please visit the Bezeugen Ministries Blog entries:

• September 13 - provides a quick update
  
• August 30 - provides information on the method
  
• August 2 - update
  
• July 26 - the vision and report on first experience