Wheeler church of Christ, Texas: We want to welcome the Wheeler church of Christ to the House to House/Heart to Heart School of Evangelism. This congregation has a strong preacher and a dedicated eldership. We look forward to seeing the fruit of their work.
Monticello church of Christ, Arkansas: Josh Walker (preacher) reports, “We started our first round of writing cards and mailed them this week. We also started planning our fall festival, and those heading up that effort are finding creative ways to get contact information from those in the community who visit us. This congregation has always been an active, hospitable, and hard-working with a desire to reach the community. It is encouraging to see them excited and invested in our program. They have confidence in it because it is organized and gives them a plan! We also reviewed the model in our evening service, which helped clear up a lot of initial confusion.”
Foothills church of Christ, Searcy, Arkansas: Josh Alexander (preacher) reports, “This week we have our gospel meeting with B.J Clarke. It started yesterday. We had 223 in attendance for worship services– the most I have seen here. We had several visitors. We door-knocked throughout the week and handed out flyers at Harding to students. We have so far set up one Bible study as a result of the meeting; hopefully, more will be coming. We currently have three studies scheduled for the next couple of weeks. In one study, Allen finished Book 2, and the wheels are turning. We will have our final study this week, and we pray he is receptive. Next week, we are studying with a man named Zack, who is Baptist, and Peyton and his wife, who are both Southern Baptist. Peyton serves as a youth pastor. We are praying these prospects are receptive to the gospel.”
Glencoe church of Christ, Alabama: David Marker (elder) reports, “We are continuing to follow up on hot contacts that have been visiting the last few weeks. Also, we are seeing some progress on working with students in the high school class. They are very much engaged in our studies, and it is reflected with the discussion in class and also in their attendance on Sunday night and Wednesday night. We should finish delivering the New Mover gift bags this week. We are beginning to work on the details for our fall festival at the end of the month. This has been a huge success in the past and has always been well-attended. A good group continues to meet every Sunday afternoon, working on the compassion cards. We have received a good response from the recipients.”
Farley church of Christ, Huntsville, Alabama: Josh Taynor (preacher) reports, “I have taken the last couple of weeks to make sure our recent convert has settled in at church. He is attending with his wife on a regular basis for the next few services now, so we are thankful for that. We will have our Mission Sunday this Sunday and work on finalizing our newest contacts.”
Hatton church of Christ, Alabama: Chris Miller (preacher) reports, “We had our mission Sunday this week with great participation. Many good visits were made this past month with follow-ups as needed. This month, there is much more discussion about going back through the entire prospect list for the last year with follow-up visits, so a plan is underway to make that happen.”
Lake City church of Christ, Florida: Jim Flegert (elder) reports, “This Sunday marks our third month participating in the new movers’ program. We have 14 new possible contacts with this new list of movers. Our members are conducting five BTTB studies.” Two are the result of Mission Monday. Two are from walk-in visitors. One is from our in-house pantry. Our compassion cards continue to reach out to many prospects.”
Niceville church of Christ, Florida: Joe Palmer (preacher) reports, “This week we saw more fruit from our HTHSOE Evangelistic Ministry. We had a weak and erring brother return to worship and bring a guest. This was one of our first Compassion Card contacts as we started our card ministry by reaching out to our fallen and weak brothers and sisters. I plan to contact him next week and set up a Back to the Bible study, as he needs to reaffirm and strengthen his faith. From there, I hope to use his growing faith to be my silent partner as I reach out to his friend. It was encouraging Sunday to see the congregation’s enthusiasm for this ministry. I have one brother who is planning a community outreach event, a fish fry. He is catching the fish himself. Several people discussed making that event and our Trunk or Treat more evangelistic. One brother volunteered to do more follow-ups with those who receive compassion cards. I also handed out several cards when I asked for new contacts. I asked one couple who own a restaurant if they would agree to let us set up a charge account for our visitor meals. They said they would. This will streamline that work. We had only one visitor this week and gave out one gift bag. I will skip my card report and do it at the week’s end, making it easier for me going forward. We had no Bible studies this week.”
Fayetteville church of Christ, Georgia: David Gulledge (associate preacher) reports, “Dave preached again from John 4; then we started the training on Sunday evening. We had two visitors with us on Sunday evening, so we collected their information and plan to do several follow-ups. Both visitors were looking for a church home.”
Woodstock church of Christ, Georgia: Greg Garner (deacon) reports, “We prayed for the prospects on our bookmarks on Sunday. During our ACTS (Actively Caring Teaching & Serving) Evangelism Program, the Compassion Card Group sent out cards last week. We had 18 in our New Converts class. The Greeter Group reported that we had 12 visitors. WCOC had four Bible studies this week. We had one baptism this week!”
LaFayette church of Christ, Georgia: Jesse Teague (deacon) reports, “Group 1 met to send compassion cards after evening worship Sunday. We usually have seven or eight people on the compassion card list from our contacts, and we cycle that list twice (first and third Sunday of the month). Each person on the list gets 10-15 cards over a period of two weeks from each group (so 20-30 for the month). We make visits the following month for that group of people. We keep the cards in a filing cabinet with a folder for each month. We meet on the first Monday of each month to set visits for the card recipients from the previous month. If folks had good visits from earlier months, we advance those cards to the next month/months for more follow up. We keep notes on the card, and Ken is adding a paper sheet to track visits and studies when needed. At any given time, we have between 10 and 20 active cards for follow up. We keep the others for review later. We go through the old cards every now and then for possible follow ups. We adjust as needed based on feedback from everyone participating. Our gospel meeting starts next week, so we hope to have many visitors from cards and visits.”
Honolulu church of Christ, Hawaii: Lima Esene (regional trainer) reports, “We have three Bible studies ongoing and one more study scheduled to start this week. Our congregation had a meeting this past Sunday to discuss the possibility of having a youth minister from among our flock. One of the blessings of evangelism is the children that are now part of the kingdom because their parents obeyed the gospel. Our congregation is seeing a growth in young children and babies. We are excited about the future as we labor today. We appreciate all prayers.”
Beloit church of Christ, Kansas (remote): Dustin Dougherty (regional trainer) reports, “I finished presenting Part 3 of the John 4 sermon series yesterday morning and spoke more about the Contact bookmarks, encouraging everyone to fill those out. One sister messaged me to tell me she is working to plant the seed of the gospel with an old friend. It was a very encouraging message to receive. We currently have post-conversion studies ongoing with three of our newer converts. I am looking forward to being with the McPherson Kansas congregation on October 14. We are looking forward to several upcoming events. To God be the Glory.”
Central church of Christ, Paducah, Kentucky: Adam Faughn (preacher) reports, “In the last seven days, we have assigned ladies to manage our evangelistic card-writing teams. We have also placed people over our guest bags and the Evangelism Center. Across the street from our building, a new Head Start day care is being completed, and we have appointed a member to be a liaison to that work, so we can hopefully find some in-roads, evangelistically, with that group of folks. Sunday, we began a three-part sermon from John 4. Sunday night, we trained the congregation on “the model,” and gave out bookmarks, providing everyone time to start contact lists. We were also blessed to welcome four new members (one will be introduced next week to the congregation as she did not meet with the elders until after our Sunday evening services). Two were a local couple who simply moved membership, but they are deeply evangelistic. One was a sister in Christ who recently moved back to Paducah. We reached Wayne, the fourth member, through our card-writing efforts. After being away from the church for a number of years, he came back when he received a large number of cards. Now, he is a restored member and ready to get to work. To God be the glory!”
Blanchard church of Christ, Louisiana: Pat Cella (elder) reports, “We sent out 30 compassion cards this week and continue to get positive feedback from these. We also passed out 12 new movers’ baskets and knocked on multiple doors.”
La Plata church of Christ, Maryland (remote): Eric Sykes (regional trainer) reports, “We had a great week. We sent out 46 compassion cards; two were single cards with multiple signatures. We had two visitors. We added two names to our congregational compassion card list. We have five open Bible studies. One person started, Does It Matter? He got sick in the middle of the study, so we pray that we can resume the study soon. We have two people about to start Lesson 3 of BTTB. Another person just completed Lesson 1 of BTTB.
“One of our new converts called this morning and said that her daughter is interested in having a Bible study. We will start that study tomorrow. Another person receiving compassion cards came home from the hospital over the weekend. She called her niece, a faithful member of the La Plata church of Christ, and said she really loved the cards and that she would like to know more about the church. We are arranging a study with her for later this week. We have 11 folks currently in our new convert training classes.
“Our elders are currently mapping out a strategy to have more members of the congregation trained in conducting Bible studies using Back to the Bible, Does It Matter? and Believe the Bible. As of last Friday, we have nine members who have completed the training on BTTB, and each person has conducted at least one Bible study that led to a conversation. We are now in the process of training coordinators and mentors to free up some of the brothers to take on other responsibilities. We appreciate all prayers.”
Southside church of Christ, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Freddie Klein (preacher) reports, “We continued our sermon series on the joy of being a Christian. We rejoice as we had two baptisms on Sunday after studying through Back to the Bible. A family member from Southside studied with these two people, and then they started to attend services. We sent them compassion cards. After completing the studies, they still were not convinced that they needed to be baptized because they thought they had already been baptized. I had a conversation with them, helping them to understand that their baptism was not valid and that they were not part of the Lord‘s Body; rather, they had been baptized into a denomination. When they finally understood, they obeyed the Gospel. On Sunday evening, we sent out cards to local contacts. Our evangelism work is going well.”
Looxahoma church of Christ, Mississippi: Blake Hawkins (deacon) reports, “A new month brings new opportunities for contacts. After worship today, families delivered new movers’ baskets throughout the community. We are holding a gospel meeting next week, so we will be heading out to knock doors and invite people to the meeting as well as giving them information about the Lord’s church. Compassion cards were also written, and we hope to have many more prospects after the door-knocking efforts.”
Iuka church of Christ, Mississippi: Robert Wimbish (elder) reports, “Several of our ladies gathered after services yesterday afternoon to paint and glaze pottery they had made to put in our welcome and new mover baskets. They prepared well over 40 assorted pottery pieces. Two of our ladies have been working with pottery for a while now and making beautiful art pieces. Everyone loves to receive something like these pottery pieces in a welcome basket. These gifts provide an immediate connection to our congregation and an easy topic for conversation. We had six new visitors at morning services yesterday. One of them came back for the evening service and then stayed to help work on pottery! She had been receiving cards and told us she had been praying for a church to reach out to her. She said that she believed her prayers had been answered. Our members wrote more than 100 cards yesterday.”
Foristell church of Christ, Missouri: Rod Jackson (elder) reports, “With two recent baptisms, we have started a new converts’ class using the book Growing in Christ. We currently have three enrolled in this study, which meets on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. This will be a perpetual class, and we hope to have others enrolled at different intervals.” We pray that this study will help mature the faith of these new brethren.”
Samford church of Christ, Steele, Missouri: Kyle Imel (deacon) reports, “We have three active studies. One will go through Book 2 of BTTB this week, and the other two will finish Book 2 Wednesday night. We have been planning and praying for our door-knocking campaign this Saturday as part of the nationwide campaign. We have been training members to knock effectively and are excited about the possibilities in gaining contacts.”
East Flushing church of Christ, New York (remote): Clarence Jenkins (preacher) reports, “Consistently, we have visitors every Lord’s Day. As of this Sunday, one out of every two visitors have been attending regularly. We have eight converts being mentored and added one more this week. Several Bible studies are ongoing, including one in Spanish. We pray that the schedules of prospects with whom we are studying will soon be adjusted so that all the studies will be more consistent. We appreciate all prayers.”
Carthage church of Christ, North Carolina (remote): Randy Chambers (preacher) reports, “This week, the congregation conducted three Bible studies using Back to the Bible Lesson 2. The First Principles class is going very well by using Growing in Christ and The Beginning of Our Confidence. We are preparing new movers’ baskets and getting ready for the National Door Knocking Campaign. We continue to encourage the congregation to follow the plan and trust the Lord.”
Cary church of Christ, North Carolina: Larry Fife (preacher) reports, “The Cary congregation has done a great job of moving forward with our evangelism model. We will be delivering new movers’ baskets soon, and we have had several new contacts reach out to us though they were not part of our AMC campaign. We have sent out compassion cards weekly and contacted several new people through email and House-to-House Heart-to-Heart.
Coweta church of Christ, Oklahoma: Keno Shrum (elder) reports, “This week has been a busy one in Coweta as we have continued sending Compassion Cards, reached out to several people for Bible studies, and prepared for our HTHSOE Advanced Training starting this Wednesday. Thanks to the help of some dear Christian friends and the graciousness of our Lord, we were able to restock and replenish our evangelism resources! There is much to do, and we are ready to get busy saving souls. Along that line, I scheduled a Bible study with a young man who moved here recently from Colorado. We will start BTTB this week with Lesson 1. He is eager to learn, and I anticipate he will be receptive to the Gospel! We appreciate prayers for this study.”
York church of Christ, Pennsylvania: Mark Raschke (deacon) reports, “This Sunday, we greeted and started getting to know a family of three who are now repeat visitors. We also sent them another round of compassion cards. In addition, we sent a second round of compassion cards to another recent visitor, who is a friend of one of our other prospects.”
East Ridge church of Christ, Chattanooga, Tennessee: Charles Cochran (preacher) reports, “We will participate in the annual door-knocking this Saturday. Austin Fowler recently identified with East Ridge. His mom and dad also identified with us. Austin will direct our door-knocking efforts. He will be a great encouragement in our evangelistic efforts. I received a Bible Correspondence Course from a lady in prison. She said she would be able to be baptized soon! We are excited about this. We continue to strengthen new Christians. I have three studies each week with new Christians. We are in touch with the son of one of our new Christians. Ginny and I had three couples for supper recently. One was the husband of a member of the church. The husband is not yet a Christian. We hope to do Back to the Bible with him. I will begin a weekly Bible class at a retirement home in East Ridge this Friday. We had been conducting Sunday afternoon services there. Most are non-Christians. We hope to influence more by changing from Sunday to Friday. God bless you bro. Rob. We love and appreciate you and your good family.”
East Main church of Christ, Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Brad Rowley (elder) reports, “We rejoice in the baptism of Stephanie Pedro. Sunday was an example of how individual members contribute to evangelism. Stephanie was a contact from a new mover’s basket. Cards were sent from our compassion card team, and follow-up visits were made. Ken Reese assisted in benevolence. Jeff Owens and Wayne Liggett participated in a service project. Multiple members were involved in the Bible study, including W.D. and Marzee Woodward, Teresa Mingle, Nicole LeBlanc, and Brad Rowley. The next steps include working with new converts and discipleship. Last week we received two new contact cards. We made multiple attempts to complete some in-home visits, but it is difficult to catch folks at home. Compassion Card Team 1 wrote 64 cards. We had four Bible studies last week, with one new study by Seth Ferguson and Tim Hayes. Billy Hutchens continues to have a positive study with a young couple we found through a new mover’s basket. We will be meeting this month to assign new converts to mentors. We are promoting October 7 as national door knocking day. East Main is blessed to be close to several large apartment complexes. We have stayed close to the church building in the last two years, but this year, we will branch out to these apartments, hoping to expand our college ministry. Our new administrative assistant Angela Weeks has developed an amazing form for our new mover basket strategy. This form will simplify our current process and give us important feedback information. The front of the form has the date assigned, address, completed date, and results. The back side of the form gives helpful hints for success. See the picture attached.
McKenzie church of Christ, Tennessee: Chance Steen (preacher) reports, “In our elders meeting tonight, we will continue to discuss new contacts for this month. We will follow up with visits from those visited last week by the select few members who signed up for that. Our main focus is getting new contacts from non-Christians in our immediate area and engaging more of the congregation to come and make visits. By the second or third visit, we hope to start setting up Bible studies. We appreciate prayers for our efforts!
New Hope church of Christ, Middleton, Tennessee: Cole Wade (preacher) reports, “We have recently started reorganizing our new mover’s responsibilities. We had a meeting this Sunday to discuss what would be best. Also, our card writing has been more frequent and organized since we do it during classes now! We had a family visit us this past Sunday, and we were able to meet them and talk with them for a while. We will likely see them again!”
New Union church of Christ, Manchester, Tennessee: Paul Fultz (elder) reports, “Three new contact cards were submitted. Four families with a total of seven visitors visited on Sunday. Members made seven follow-up visits and contacts last week, not counting phone calls and texts. One Bible Study is scheduled this week. ”
Covington church of Christ, Tennessee: Wayne Dalrymple (elder) reports, “It has been another busy week as we tried to plant and water the seeds of the kingdom this week. We were glad to see our newest convert, Daniel, is attending all of our services since he became a Christian. He attends our class for new converts, and we will connect him with other members, so he feels like he is truly part of the family. We are continuing to have several visitors every week. Two may be close to Bible studies. We are also ready to transition some of our prospects to whom we have been sending cards. We will be visiting them and hopefully asking the three questions to get them into a Bible study. We will be participating in the Door Knocking Day this Saturday. We will meet at 9:00 for a short devotional and some training before going out into the community. We also plan to deliver new movers baskets. On Monday, I encountered a woman and her son. I was in the school parking lot and saw a vehicle with the hood up. I asked if they needed help. Their SUV had overheated and was out of coolant. The teenage boy was going to walk to the gas station (over a mile) and get some coolant. I offered to give him a ride. They agreed, so we went to get the coolant. When we returned, the lady asked if she could pay me for my trouble. I told her no, but she could visit our worship services. I handed her one of the invitation cards that I kept in my wallet. She said they might visit. We never know when an opportunity might present itself. May God provide many more open doors for the gospel.”
Fruitvale church of Christ, Texas: Carl McCann (preacher) reports, “Please welcome Laura to the family of God. We are grateful for her baptism yesterday afternoon. She went through Back to the Bible but did not obey the Gospel, so we gave her Muscle and a Shovel. The combined teaching was exactly what she needed. Please keep her in your prayers as she begins her new walk in Christ.”
Bridgeport church of Christ, Katy, Texas: Doug Suggs (member) reports, “We have a few new contacts and some visitors who will soon receive cards. One of our members is studying with a new convert each week. She informed me that the convert (and she) is learning. Last Wednesday, we reviewed Lesson 1 of Back to the Bible, which was good for everyone. It is good to see some positive things happening in evangelism. We appreciate all prayers.”
Canyon Lake church of Christ, Texas (remote): Jesse Stuart and Raoul Ferris (evangelists) report, “We are currently in four Bible studies with six people. This is wonderful, and we continue to work on the plan. We are still working with a couple that needs to make some changes in their current living arrangements. They are open to the truth and honestly seek God’s Word; we are in Book 3 with them. With another mother and daughter, we completed Book 1 and hope to do Book 2 this week with them. We are studying Book 2 with a very charismatic young man. He had a hang-up with taking communion every first day of the week. We were thankful to have a Canyon Lake member, Joe Friant, who answered the young man’s questions with Scripture and logic. We are in another study with a man because of an act of benevolence. While door-knocking, one of our teams contacted a lady. Later, she informed us that her garbage disposal was not working and asked if we could unstop it. We are thankful for Mike Stanfield, a member here who is a handyman. Because of this, we could set up a study with a man in transit. We completed Book 1 and hope to complete Book 2 before he moves, but we hope to connect him with the church in Johnson City. We also visited one of our prospects who had an amputated leg. Because of our compassion cards, we were able to have a long and productive conversation with him. We will hopefully take him to some of his doctor appointments soon. He has been texting with us and even sent pictures of his recent fitting for a prosthetic leg. We also installed a Mini-Library. We share a fence and gate with the Startzville Elementary School, and we wanted to maximize our evangelism efforts because people walk through our gate daily to access the school. We will stock it with Bibles and the Apologetic Press early readers series. This coming week we hope to revisit our New Movers and do some more door-knocking. We appreciate all prayers.”
Highway 95 church of Christ, Taylor, Texas: Benjamin Dossey reports, “We have an ongoing Bible study on Wednesday night. We are currently on Book 2 of Back to the Bible. This Saturday, we will go back into the neighborhood to deliver new mover baskets to our community.”
Southwest church of Christ, Austin, Texas: John Garza (regional trainer) reports, “We have multiple studies going on. One is close to finishing Book 3, so we pray she receives it well. We continue to learn how to teach Back to the Bible. Things are going great!”
Granbury Street church of Christ, Cleburne, Texas: Ryan Cowan (deacon) reports, “We are thrilled to share the exciting news that Danielle Santos was baptized into Christ on Sunday, September 24! Danielle connected with our church through her friendship with Paul and Sandy Doyle. John Haffner, our preacher, studied with Danielle using the Back to the Bible. Danielle is actively participating in our Foundations class, taught by Will Cammack. It is great to see her taking this next step in her spiritual development. In addition to Danielle’s baptism, members Michael Mora and Cody Grinnell will soon meet with a couple, Israel and his wife Jessica, who have started visiting Granbury Street. It is worth noting that the church had previously provided some financial assistance to Israel. Cody had the opportunity to complete Does It Matter with him then. Now, Cody and Michael are grateful for the chance to meet with both Israel and his wife and begin Book 1 of BTTB.
“One other note: Carla Hughes has finished Book 2 with a recent convert, her oldest daughter, and her cousin. We are prayerful as they begin Book 3 in the coming weeks. Furthermore, Cheryl McIntosh completed Book 1 with a contact identified through our community service efforts in July. However, Cheryl and her prospect are seeking additional tools to help with the prospect’s difficulties with reading and writing English. We are confident that we will find suitable resources to assist them.
“During Sunday night’s worship, one of our elders, Jeff Day, delivered a comprehensive review on effectively using our bookmarks to convert contacts into prospects. Jeff did an excellent job explaining the purpose behind bookmarks, and each member present was provided with one. As a next step, we will begin collecting contact information from these bookmarks on Sunday evenings to send compassion cards.”
Northern Oaks church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas: Mel Hutzler (elder) reports, “We have several members in Bible studies. Some have just started, and some will close soon. We have a Trunk or Treat coming up with an invitation to our community to come so we can get to know them. We trust this will lead to some Bible studies. Our new movers’ program has made many more visits because so many are moving to San Antonio. We have had a few more place membership and hope to have more baptisms to report soon.”
Graceton church of Christ, Diana, Texas: Johnny Willeford (elder) reports, “Our pulpit preacher, Scott Dykowski, continues to present lessons that encourage our members to dedicate our lives to Jesus’ teachings and go into the world to spread the good news. Group C met today to sign compassion cards for four recipients who are receiving 43 cards this week. We held our First Sunday Fellowship Meal after morning services. We also had four families visit; two stayed for the meal. Two of those visitors had recently been receiving compassion cards. Training has started for the New Movers area of outreach. We are still putting that group together. This past week, the ladies went shopping as a group for the baskets and items to be handed out to the new movers. It is time that we start tapping into that area for new contacts.”
Central church of Christ, Martinsburg, West Virginia: Robert Veil (preacher) reports, “We have enjoyed reporting all of the many good works over the last year since the seminar. We welcomed two new sisters on Sunday, each placing membership from area congregations when they moved our way. We are still celebrating the baptism of Adrian Floyd from the previous week. Our Bible study with Jeff and Dottie continues, and other studies are being formed.”
Recent Comments