Aberdeen church of Christ, Maryland: We welcome the Aberdeen church of Christ to the House to House/Heart to Heart School of Evangelism. During our leadership meeting, one of their elders gave one of the most stirring speeches I have ever heard on their commitment to local evangelism. Their preacher, Will Brown, is on fire to save souls. We look forward to working together.
Linville Forrest church of Christ, Kernersville, North Carolina: We welcome the Linville Forrest church of Christ back to the House to House/Heart to Heart School of Evangelism. They first took the course in March of 2020, but due to the COVID pandemic (which hit the Sunday after we left), they were not able to take full advantage of the training. They took what they learned in 2021 and baptized 13. They asked us to come back for the advanced training and to enroll in our 52-week training curriculum. We look forward to working with them to reach their community.
Chesapeake church of Christ, Virginia: We welcome the Chesapeake church of Christ into the House to House/Heart to Heart School of Evangelism. We visited this congregation last fall. They are now ready to enroll in HTHSOE and begin the training process. Their preacher is Ernest Benjamin, and he is a graduate of HTHSOE and a dedicated evangelist. This was one of the first congregations we taught, but now they are enrolling in the school.
Churches of Christ, India: Earlier this year, Ronnie Gootam asked if they could translate Back to the Bible into three different languages to use in India. They recently finished and now are using it in some campaigns. Brother Gootam reported eight baptisms in just a couple days using the Telegu translation. We are going to record these baptisms separately from our US numbers. We rejoice with souls being saved all over the world. Back to the Bible is now translated into eight different languages.
Corinth church of Christ, Portland, Tennessee: On Mother’s Day, we stopped to visit with Nicole’s mom. We provided the congregation an advanced training lesson on Sunday evening and passed out the contact bookmarks. They have had four baptisms this year already!
Canal Heights church of Christ, Demopolis, Alabama: Bryan Cook (preacher) reports, “This week we started the Back to the Bible series of sermons. The weekly meetings of the eldership and preacher have caused our focus to become more of an evangelistic mindset. For the first time as a congregation, we had members to raise their hands if any on their cards were sick (or graduating) so we could send them cards. We had a quiet time for our contacts and then a public prayer for our efforts. It seemed like many are waking up to the idea that we are supposed to evangelize. We are having time after each sermon asking about those with whom we should follow up. We are seriously trying to connect with contacts that have just fallen in our lap. There was a major meeting of the minds after second service when we realized that our contact card system had a major flaw. Members were leaving without filling out the information for their contacts who needed cards. The issue was that they did not know the address of the one on their list. We shall see how this turns out. We now have several in the congregation that have stepped up to take care of some of the steps in the process. We bought binders to keep track of various jobs. Continue to pray for our efforts as we pray for all of you.”
Forestview church of Christ, Memphis, Tennessee: Tim Roland (preacher) reports, “We had our highest visitor attendance to date this year with 27 (one more than last week). That makes a total of 169 visitors in the past nine weeks with an average of 18.66 per week! We still had a good number present yesterday with 83 (I believe the second highest for this year, with many of regular folks out of town or sick). We continue to send cards to our visitors with our Encouragement Ministry Team and to work on our contact list. I will be preaching the third installment of the sermon from John 4: “The Politically Incorrect Evangelist” next Sunday! Forestview has a bright future! We may appoint an additional elder next week!”
Woodstock church of Christ, Georgia: Matt Amos (preacher) reports, “We are in the middle of the red Back to the Bible sermons. Our congregation met Sunday night for our evangelism program. We sent out seven teams to make visits. Some of these visits are from HTH contacts in our area. Together we signed 56 cards to send out this week. We made 24 welcome bags. We have several Bible studies in progress. Our service team helped move furniture for a newly married couple. We are conducting a Bible study application class usingA Personal Study video for those interested in gaining more confidence in conducting personal Bible studies. Those involved seem to be very engaged.”
Gilt Edge church of Christ, Tennessee: Daniel Dalton (preacher) reports, “We baptized a man yesterday. He is the son-in-law to one of our late members. He said that she was constantly on him about becoming a Christian, but he never was ready until yesterday. His aunt (another member at Gilt Edge) passed away last week, and her funeral was yesterday. While at the visitation, he told me that he had been listening to our Facebook for a long time now and that he wanted to be baptized. It was a tough day yesterday, and a good day!”
Cowetta church of Christ, Oklahoma: Keno Shrum (preacher) reports, “Things are moving along here in Cowetta. We had a great Bible study with a couple the other night. We are also working on filling out contact cards and will be forwarding the mailing info to HTH to get mailers started to them. Then after they have received a couple, we will be reaching out to them to try to secure a study. Our gospel meeting with Aaron Gallagher begins later this week, and we are making every effort to get people from town to attend. We have a Saturday scheduled in June to go out again and welcome New Movers to the area.”
Wewoka church of Christ, Oklahoma: Gage Coldwater (preacher) reports, “We had a good week here though somewhat frightening. We had 13 tornadoes that hit our area. We had the opportunity to use the building as a shelter. This brought several families to us, and we spent several hours with them. We have put them on our list and will be sending them cards and visiting them for the next month.”
Highway church of Christ, Benton, Arkansas: Steven Ford (preacher) reports, “This week has been busy and a bit challenging. We are still right on schedule, but some of the details got away from us. However, by week’s end, we were back on track. Our elders have taken the role of door greeters to ensure they meet all the visitors and encourage the members with regard to evangelism bookmarks, daily prayers, and compassion cards after worship. Our table cover finally arrived, and it looks great. Our first follow up visit will take place on Monday. Between the two preachers and four elders, we hope to visit all those that received benevolent help over the past month. We will also help follow up with the other visits as needed.”
Shiloh church of Christ, Florence, Alabama: McKinley Pate (preacher) reports, “What a week! The congregation is really catching on with what we are trying to do with our evangelism outreach. We had four contact cards filled out recently with a fifth coming tonight. We are having great participation from the members in sending our compassion cards. We have sent dozens of cards this week and more to come. This morning (Mother’s Day), we saw our biggest crowd since the start of the pandemic. This past week, we also welcomed the mother of one of our members as she placed membership. She wanted to be placed in a compassion card group immediately! People are seeing what we are doing and are wanting to be a part of it. Lord willing, we will be delivering our first New Mover basket sometime this week! It will be to a family member of someone here at Shiloh. The Lord has blessed us, and we are excited to see how far this goes!”
Westside church of Christ, Muncie, Indiana: Mike Gors (preacher) reports, “We sent out over 100 compassion cards to eight people. Bible studies continue. We will be starting to teach the congregation how to use the booklets.”
Paintsville church of Christ, Kentucky: Zach Collins (preacher) reports, “This past week, our congregation sent out 40 compassion cards, which were generated over the last three weeks, to those in need! In the next two weeks, we have set a goal to send out 50 compassion cards. In addition, we handed out our first visitor bag this past week and generated four new contact cards from visitors that were in attendance on Mother’s Day! Lastly, we will be having an evangelistic event this coming Sunday, May 15, for our Senior Salute. We hope we get to meet many new visitors! Keep praying for receptive hearts in our community.”
Peninsula church of Christ, Hampton Virginia: Ben Phillips (preacher) reports, “The Peninsula Church of Christ has had an active few weeks as we continue to focus efforts on evangelism. I reintroduced the bookmarks and contact cards to the congregation the Sunday before last and accompanied that with a sermon on the great commission. I again explained the purpose of the bookmark and the contact cards and asked if there was anyone who had someone on their card who was ill. We had one sister ask for a card. This past Sunday I again brought the cards up with mention of anyone who might be going through marital issues, and we had another sister provide a contact card. Another sister had been praying for the names on her card, and an opportunity presented itself to create a contact card and begin sending the compassion cards to this contact. I intend to continue to put this before the congregation regularly, as Rob suggested in information he sent me, so that we can have contacts to prospect to God’s glory.
“We have also arranged to begin the HTH New Movers program beginning this month. In addition, we also went door knocking over this past weekend and made five new contacts in our community and are following up with them. We have already sent cards to them.
“One other note of encouragement from the last few weeks involves a young couple, Kyle and Tessa Bettis, who are members here. They asked Patricia (my wife) and me to help them learn how to teach others. We started walking through the Back to the Bible lessons with them this past Friday and spent time discussing how to reach our neighbors. We enjoyed a good meal and great fellowship together. Doing the work of evangelism together through the cards, door knocking, studies, and training others is a tremendous opportunity to grow together to God’s glory!”
Riverbend church of Christ, Georgia: Austin Fowler (member) reports, “It was a busy week at Riverbend! On Wednesday, the church fed the Southeast High School Soccer team. This is the high school where I teach, and on Thursday, they were playing for the State Championship. We decided to feed them on Wednesday and have them stay for our devotional period. We collected contact info for all the boys that were there. We will send them all cards congratulating them on winning the state championship, inviting them to come back, and letting them know we are there for them if they ever need anything.
“Sunday, we had our biggest crowd! We had 160 people in attendance, including several visitors. We collected contact info for them and added them to our contact list. Our SALT group number two met after Sunday evening services. They were able to send 148 cards for this week. Our congregational list continues to grow each week.
“Tonight, Jason Duggin, one of our elders, had a Bible Study with a couple that has been visiting with us for a few weeks. The wife is an unfaithful member, and the husband is not a member. He said that it went well and scheduled study number two for next Monday night!”
Coldwater church of Christ, Murray, Kentucky: Luke Puckett (preacher) reports, “This past week, we finished reworking our visitor bags to include some personal items with the Coldwater info on it. We are putting in a pen and a 4×6 notepad that has the church’s info on it. We feel these will be a good addition for our visitor bags.
“We also had a good letter mailed to us concerning the House to House monthly mail out. The lady wrote how much she enjoys reading them and appreciates the Scripture they use. She stated she is a member at a local Catholic Church, but if she was looking for a church home, she would visit us. We added her to our contact list and also put her address down for us to visit on our next door knocking day. We pray we can build a relationship with her through the mail out and these efforts; hopefully, we will earn a Bible study with her. We continue our focus on our compassion cards with plans on following up with in person visits soon.”
University church of Christ, Montgomery, Alabama: Faires Austin reports, “Two of our young girls at the University Church of Christ were baptized last Wednesday night. Visits are being made to several of the New Movers in the area. We continue to pass out visitor bags to new prospects. Our congregation continues to grow in number and in spirituality. Because of our growth in numbers, we are busy getting to know these new additions to our family and put them to work in His Kingdom.”
New Hope church of Christ, Middleton, Tennessee: Cole Wade (preacher) reports, “Our numbers at church are growing every week. We have more children and families at church and at our events, and we recently had record-breaking attendance with so many opportunities to make contacts! We have a lot of work to do, and we are very excited for it! Pray for us that we have the courage and motivation to prospect and schedule Bible studies. We are currently studying with a family of five, and we hope to see them come to the cross very soon. Thank you for the prayers! We will be praying for you as well!”
Monroe church of Christ, Georgia: Charles Harris (preacher) reports, “Saturday was the first day of a monthly door knocking work. We went with the approach of asking for prayer requests and had a great response. We will reach out to the individuals who requested prayers during the month by sending them cards. Next month, we are going to door knock the same houses to promote two events for June and ask for updates on the previous prayer requests. My experience is that door knocking is more effective when you have a continual presence in the community. This work is designed to give more members opportunities to get involved in evangelistic works. Obviously being a door knocker is an opportunity, but also those who are unable to do much walking are helping with getting material ready providing water, snacks, and transportation. Hopefully, we will be setting up more studies soon.”
Hillsboro church of Christ, Tennessee: Shelby Moorman (preacher) reports, “We passed baskets out to new movers and are writing cards to the contacts tonight. We made nine contacts from the new movers program this past Saturday.”
Shertz church of Christ, Texas: Jay Stewart (elder) reports, “This week, group one finished mailing cards to six prospects, and we rotated those to group two for mailing this upcoming week. We did not receive any new contact cards on Sunday. We are also waiting for feedback from the members who submitted prospects and were mailed compassion cards last week to see what impact our compassion cards may be having.”
Northern Oaks church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas: Mel Hutzler (preacher) reports, “We have all four card writing teams up and running with an increase of cards being sent out. We also have four groups to take down the names of visitors. We have been getting a few names from bookmarks and some from visitors. We still need to make a few tweaks here and there, but things are running a lot better. We still need to start the New Movers program and HTH mail out; hopefully we will add these efforts before the month is over. I know we need to order a few more cards, too. Bible studies are still ongoing. Hopefully and prayerfully, they will translate into some baptisms.”
Rogersville church of Christ, Tennessee: Ethan Tate (preacher) reports, “This past week has been a planning week to reach out to the community. As we work out the details to make VBS an evangelistic event, we are reviewing and marking out areas to door knock in the community where House to House has been sent. This past Sunday, we finished the second book of Back to the Bible and we are about to head into the final study. Please continue your prayers for the three visitors who have been in this study from the start. These are very critical moments to help them obey the gospel! God be with everyone in their work for the kingdom.”
North Tuscaloosa church of Christ: Clark Sims (preacher), reports, “We at North Tuscaloosa are so thankful for the baptism this past week of Starla Richburg. Starla is a devoted wife and mother and a great blessing to the North Tuscaloosa family.”
NOTE: These reports are from Christians and congregations enrolled in the House to House/Heart to Heart School of Evangelism. These emails are sent to teach and provoke one another to remain focused on the mission of Christ. Each week, we share several reports and highlight one with more details. We hope you enjoy reading them.
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