West End church of Christ, Knoxville, Tennessee: Jeremy Weekly (preacher) reports, “A few weeks ago, three young people (Olivia, Micah, and Clayton) from Florida knocked on Becky’s door as part of the American Missions Campaign in Knoxville, Tennessee. They connected Becky with our church family. Since that time, some of our ladies have been studying with Becky, and today she made the decision to put on Christ in baptism to have her sins washed away. Becky is such a loving and caring person, and we are so glad she is part of the Lord’s kingdom now. What a great day! Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! Welcome, sister!”
New Union church of Christ, Manchester, Tennessee: Paul Fultz (elder) reports, “It has been three weeks since Rob Whitacre trained the New Union Church of Christ in Manchester, Tennessee. This past week, we set up a room for compassion cards and personal evangelism materials. Shelves cover one entire wall. The materials were placed on selves to provide easy access. We also placed a table in the foyer to serve as a Personal Evangelism Table. Some materials were placed on the table and others stored underneath.”
“On Sunday Morning we had prayer for the ten lost individuals listed on our bookmarks. We called for bookmark contacts who had surgery, illness, a hospital stay, or military service. Three contact cards were submitted. We also had a contact card filled out for a family visiting for the first time on Sunday.”
“On Sunday evening after services, Card Team 4 met for the first time. Thirty men, women, and young people attended and wrote 85 cards for five contracts.”
“The team leader organized the list of prospects and pulled compassion cards for the team to complete. The card writing session lasted only 30 minutes, but the job was completed. Much excitement and enthusiasm was created by our good progress.”
Karns church of Christ, Knoxville, Tennessee: Terry Clark (elder) reports, “We prepared new mover baskets Saturday, and we are looking forward to establishing some good contacts upon delivery to our new neighbors. On Sunday, we had a visitor as a direct result of receiving a new mover basket. One of our brethren spent time after service cultivating a relationship.”
“Bible study continues with a neighbor whose door was knocked during the AMC week. Our neighbor has been in regular attendance at services; brethren continue to work this hot contact, and we are excited about this prospect.”
“Karns will be teaching BTTB next quarter to middle and high school, college age, and adults to equip members with a great tool to conduct one on one Bible studies.”
York church of Christ, Pennsylvania: Fred Nowell (elder/preacher) reports, “We are still in the process of organizing our evangelism room. We are also working with a young man who is trying to get on the right path in life. He (Dominic) is still living in a member’s apartment, and he just obtained a job. The church has helped him, and we are currently supplying a basket of home supplies and food for him. He has been coming to services every week for a month now. Study is very soon.”
“We are also getting to know a couple that are coming to worship. We will be going to their home for a meal and visit. Barry has many questions and is willing to study. Please keep these people in your prayers.”
“The AMC videos have been very helpful and encouraging. The videos provide the best six minutes of most days.”
Sunrush church of Christ, Chillicothe, Ohio: Jeryl Webb reports, “This past week, we created two of our Sunrush Evangelism News flyers. We have put emphasis on who our prospects are. We focused our attention on those who recently lost loved ones and those going through marital problems. I addressed the congregation, and we talked about the need to send out compassion cards. We are putting together our evangelism teams and will begin meeting after our evening services on Sunday for food and fellowship as we send out the compassion cards. I will also be training our team leaders how to train our teams to do a Bible study.”
Covington church of Christ, Tennessee: Wayne Dalrymple (elder) reports, “God is blessing us with one great week after another at Covington! Last Wednesday, we had a ten-year-old girl named Mia visit with us. When I asked whom she came with, she said she walked from her house, which is just 100 yards from our church building. She attended our Bible class that night. We gave her a visitor bag and got her address so we could send her compassion cards. Some of our members took her home since it was dark when service was dismissed. They talked to her mother and invited her to visit. We will be following up with this contact.”
“On Sunday, Roy Johnson, Executive Director of Lads to Leaders, spoke for us during our Bible class and worship hours. Although we have a fairly strong program already, we asked him to help us improve it. He did a great job informing us of all the possibilities and motivating us to grow in our involvement in the program.”
“On Sunday evening, Jeff and Anna Kate began book 3 with Emma. They met at Jeff’s house after the evening service. They were not able to complete it then, but they agreed to meet Monday night during our Monday Night for the Master meeting. They enjoyed a meal together and then finished the study. After the study, Emma decided to put Christ on in baptism.”
“Brandon Matlock is still studying with Timothy, the husband of one of our new converts. They finished book 2 Monday night. The kingdom is growing at Covington. We pray it continues to grow everywhere.”
Parkway church of Christ, Fulton, Kentucky: Will Hester (preacher) reports, “We had an awesome day on Sunday with two visitors and 91 in attendance. We heard lesson 2 from the blue book of BTTB. The elders asked us to meet at 4:00 p.m. to write cards, and we had roughly 25 people come to write! Our young adult class plans to put together visitors bags during their class this coming Sunday, which will be a great help!”
Greenfield church of Christ, Tennessee: Clint Monroe (elder) reports, “During the morning service, we had each member fill out a sheet to determine what each member would be willing to do to assist in the evangelism program. The elders met with our group leaders on Sunday evening to develop a working plan for each of the groups.”
“Currently, two studies are in progress, and three more starting soon. We have at least one new contact to prospect with more to come.”
“Lastly, we are setting up our “evangelism” room, which will serve as a centralized area for groups to find materials such as cards, new mover baskets, and visitor bags. Pictures to follow soon.”
Fayette church of Christ, Alabama: Kaleb Hall (preacher) reports, “We are still doing follow-ups. Though several people said no, we set up a few visits. We pray these will turn into Bible studies. We did the Back to the Bible lessons on Sunday mornings and finished those a few weeks ago. We are not sending cards now because we are doing follow up. We will begin sending cards again next week.”
Honolulu church of Christ, Hawaii: Tagiilima Esene (preacher) reports, “Aloha from the Honolulu congregation! In the last two weeks, we had two guest speakers back-to-back. Therefore, our training in the Back to the Biblebooklets was paused for those times. We will continue the training this coming Lord’s Day with book two lessons on “The Worship of the Church.” We have three ongoing Bible studies (two in book one, one in book two). Our new converts class has been helping in preparing the Lord’s supper every Sunday for the past two months. This past Sunday we got to see one of our new converts serving on the Lord’s table. It is a great blessing to be able to see our new converts growing spiritually. Lord willing, in September we will start our new movers program and our month-to-month House to House and Heart to Heart mail outs. Please remember us in your prayers. Mahalo.”
Woodstock church of Christ, Georgia: Greg Garner (deacon) reports, “WCOC collected five contact cards, so we can prospect this week. One was a cold contact and four were warm contacts. Our congregation is meeting on the second, third and fourth Sunday evenings to write cards. We have 64 cards to send out for th next couple of weeks from last night’s card writing. Last week we sent out 36 cards. Two visitation groups knocked on doors using the HTH/HTH mailer list. Forty homes were visited. Of that number, thirteen people/families were added to the prospect list, and we will follow up with a second visit. Out of the thirteen, two are very good prospects who showed a lot of interest regarding the church. One service project was completed on August 28, 2022. We visited thirty-five new movers this month and gave them the new movers baskets. The new movers group created sixteen new coffee stations baskets. We have a total of fifty-five coffee stations for the month of September. WCOC visited one individual per request of an individual of congregation. We have nine Bible Studies in progress.”
Aberdeen church of Christ, Maryland: Will Brown (preacher) reports, “We have another new sister who was baptized into Christ this past Friday. Her family has been studying with her. We have one restoration due do receiving a contact card. We continue to follow the process of every Sunday getting contacts from the congregation. We have one ongoing study with Back to the Bible, lesson two.”
“The card teams have sent out over 100 compassion cards. This week the visitation team will visit the first set of contacts. The new covert class is going very well. Praise God for the continued success for our evangelism effort.”
New Hope church of Christ, Middleton, Tennessee: Cole Wade (preacher) reports, “We recently had a young girl at the building who talked about wanting to be baptized, so we met with her and asked her about what she knew and why she wanted to do it. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned wanting to let her mom know. Seeing the opportunity, we set up a Bible study with the young girl and her mom. They are friends with some of our members, and very soon we will be having a study. We are excited for this, and we have continued creating an environment where evangelism is our mission. We are talking about evangelism and reaching people more than ever before. It is so great to observe the growth!”
Rogersville church of Christ, Tennessee: Ethan Tate (preacher) reports, “This past week we made the final preparations for our Gospel Meeting. Our FB advertisement reached over 4000 views! We made three contacts through the video, and one of those contacts is a head minister of a local Baptist church! We have started our meeting with excellent attendance and support from the area. As of Monday, we have made five prospects, and three people affiliated with the Baptist faith continue to attend the meeting. We ask for your prayers! Gospel Meetings are only one means of reaching a unique crowd, but we still have much work left to do as we will continue cultivating when the meeting ends. Please pray for our labors here and ask God to help us bear the fruit of increase for His glory.”
Paintsville church of Christ, Kentucky: Zach Collins (preacher) reports, “This past week, we finished our Bible class using the Back to the Bible lessons, along with a breakdown of the individual roles that our members will play in our school of evangelism. Starting next week, we will be going through the flowchart once again to remind others of the various ways they can participate in our evangelism. Pray for us!”
Canal Heights church of Christ, Demopolis, Alabama: Bryan Shultz (preacher) reports, “This Sunday we decided to focus our prayers and cards on those that have lost loved ones. There was also a push to get to the visitation stage of our evangelism. The ground has really been tilled these past few months, and visits should be coming soon. This will be the first time as a congregation that we have focused our efforts on getting an actual visit system in place. Our prior efforts have been sporadic at best. We are committed to learning how to effectively and systematically get visits that will hopefully lead to Bible studies. Our directory is almost finished, and we will use it in our evangelistic program by utilizing email to send digital resources to our members. Our visitor bag stations are set up, and bags will probably go out this week into the auditorium. Please continue to pray for our efforts as we pray for you.”
Crossville church of Christ, Tennessee: Alan Judd (preacher) reports, “We share our new mover information with the church at Fairfield Glade, and they had a baptism after making a contact with someone in that area from the list. As I stated at PTP, the new Christian was shy and did not want their name disclosed. Out of privacy, I will respect that request. We continue to have studies and ongoing conversations, praying for God’s blessings.”
Riverbend church of Christ, Georgia: Austin Fowler (member) reports, “This week at Riverbend was a week full of contact creators. On Friday, I received a text from one of our members. She was talking to one of the janitors where she works, and he said he would like to study the Bible. We are working on setting a date and time to study with him. Tonight, I went to eat dinner with one of my former students. He lost his grandmother this past week, and she was his main caretaker. A few months ago, he lost his grandfather. When his grandfather passed, the church at Riverbend hosted the family and fed them a meal at the building. This time, we took food to the family. I went to the visitation and told David I would like to take him to supper to catch up. David, in his witty way, said, “I could do you dirty and get you to take me to Red Lobster.” I responded, “David, Red Lobster it is!” He was very shocked! We had a great meal. I plan to check on him every other week and take him out for a meal. Hopefully, I can turn the prospecting into a Bible study. Pray for David during this difficult time.”
Northern Oaks church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas: Mel Hutzler (elder/preacher) reports, “We have had several people place membership over this past month, and they want to get involved in evangelism. We still have our four teams meeting, and cards are going out each week. We have a few who are in Bible Studies while others are being prospected. We have taken visitors out to eat and made contacts. Our main struggle is following up on everyone who has received cards; it is difficult to get to all of them. We still have more changes to make and hurdles to overcome, but I am sure we can continue to press forward.”
Southwest church of Christ, Austin, Texas: John Garza (associate preacher) reports, “I am writing to give an update concerning the Southwest Church of Christ. Last Sunday, Stella Bennett was baptized for the forgiveness of her sins. A few years ago, she had been baptized at summer camp, but she came to question her reasons for doing so. After studying through Back to the Bible with Karen Speir, she realized that she was baptized for the wrong reasons; therefore, she made it right by obeying the gospel of Christ. She is one of the six baptisms that we have had in the past few months. To God be the glory! Lord willing, we will have two more in the next couple of weeks. Pray that their hearts will be receptive in the final study! Since you and your family were here, the congregation has been on fire with evangelism. It seems as if I am constantly hearing of members’ personal contacts and prospects that they will lead to Bible studies. All that to say, it has been a very encouraging past few months, and we have only began to scratch the surface of what we learned when you were here. To God be the glory.”
Oak Hill church of Christ, Covington, Georgia: Tate Sutton (preacher) reports, “We wrote more cards to our new mover basket recipients today. We have a total of six contacts we are trying to prospect. We have a new visitor that is a member of the church but had fallen away for years. We are working with her now.”
Beloit church of Christ, Kansas: Dustin Doughtery (preacher) reports, “The grandson of one of our members has visited for several weeks in a row, and when I asked him if he would like to know more, he agreed to a study. We are coordinating our schedules now to set a date.”
Lythia Springs church of Christ, Georgia: Larry Acuff reports, “Our evangelism is going great! We had one baptism this past week. Last week, we set up three Bible studies. One young man whom we baptized a few weeks ago is growing spiritually. Folks are using Back to the Bible booklets.”
Coweta church of Christ, Oklahoma: Keno Shrum (elder/preacher) reports, “We are working with a man who is new to a Oklahoma; he has spent his whole life working as a cowboy. After 45 years of working ranches, he seems to be at a point where he is open to learning about God. Due to health conditions, we are not going to be able to do BTTB in three lessons. He has a hard time sitting for long periods. So we are going to have multiple lessons per week after dinner by dividing each lesson into three sessions. So getting through BTTB will take approximately nine sessions, but we hope to do at least three sessions per week. Please keep this study in your prayers.”
North Jefferson church of Christ, Mt. Pleasant, Texas: Kris Groda (preacher) reports, “We have initiated the followup visits for the compassion cards. This visitation team is called “North Jefferson Caring and Connecting.” Geary and Leslie Jenkins are our neighbors. They have been on our compassion card list along with Leslie’s mom, Shirley Foster. Today would have been her dad’s 94th birthday. He passed about three years ago. Today we had a good visit, helped unload heavy groceries and supplies (they had been to Sam’s), and had a prayer. We a building our relationship steadily.”
Hillsboro church of Christ, Tennessee: Shelby Moorman (preacher) reports, “Making contacts this morning and not wasting any time! I’m proud of Roy’s pep speech this morning. He was listening at PTP! It is awesome to have another elder leading the charge.”
Deerfield church of Christ, Birmingham, Alabama: Richard Harp (preacher) reports, “Jeffrey is planning to have a Bible study with Alex Taylor this week. The studies with Pam, Duke, and Jake are up in the air, but we have set up another study with Frank. Pam is dealing with severe depression (she called for the study with day and time but did not come). Frank also deals with PTSD. Jake is dealing with a court date and struggling. Please pray for these efforts to close the studies with them.”
Stafford Road church of Christ (digital enrollment), Alabama: Daniel Welker (preacher) reports, “I am the new minister at the Stafford Road church. Although we are not enrolled in the School of Evangelism as a congregation, I have been to the School of Evangelism Seminar twice and graduated from the School of Evangelism while at the Memphis School of Preaching.”
“The first thing I did was to visit the members of the congregation in their homes. Through the first set of visits, a study with DJ Britten began. We planned to play basketball during our second visit, but as we were shooting baskets, DJ said that he had been listening to the sermons preached at Stafford Road, and he realized he had not been baptized for remission of sins as discussed in the Bible. So we talked about the reasons for baptism and why we need to be baptized. After the discussion, DJ said he was ready to be baptized for the remission of his sins.
“On August 1, 2022, I was visiting with Bobby Bailey, and he said that he was baptized at 16 at church camp for the praise of men. After studying for several hours, he decided he wanted to be baptized for the remission of sins because he did not want to go to sleep knowing that if he died tonight, he would not go to heaven.”
“After DJ’s baptism, we shifted to trying to develop a relationship with his mom, Rachel, and she has been at every service since I became the minister. We had a study with her, and in the assessment, she asked if she could show me the video of her “baptism” on her phone. I agreed. The man who baptized her said since she had already “been saved,” he would baptize her as an outward sign of an inward change. Rachel said, “That is not the reason the Bible says to be baptized.” We studied about baptism in the Bible, ending with the account of the Ethiopian eunuch. I asked Rachel, “What hinders you from being baptized?” She said, “Nothing!” So I baptized her.
“Since their baptisms, DJ and Bobby have become involved in worship as well as studying in the word to help them grow in the faith. We are striving to start a Sunday school class for Rachel’s five children. It is my hope and prayer that the church embraces the school of evangelism methods.”
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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