Bezeugen Tract Club

When handing out Gospel tracts, one of the simplest ways to get people to take them is to ask “did you get one of these” and hand them the tract. Most people will take the tract and say Thanks! At many large events like ball games or concerts, we will often stand someplace where there is a line of people streaming buy and hand out the tracts asking over and over again “did you get one of these?”

As people walk past taking the tracts, sometimes you’ll hear someone who has already passed by ask “what is it?” as they have walked past. If they are still within ear shot we might reply “it’s a Gospel tract!”

That gave me an idea. Why not just print on the card on one side “It’s a Gospel tract” and then hand them out. People would be asking them self ”what is it” and then look down and read it on the card and realize that it is a Gospel tract.

As I continued to pray about this idea the Lord gave me the idea to make the tract look like a smart phone with a text message dialog on it. This lead to the card that we have released.

Our experience handing out this card has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, we can use the line “did you get one of these?” and I have had people ask that, look at the card and answer it for them self. So, it has accomplished its intended purpose.

However, the card can also be handed out in a manner of asking someone “do you have the world’s thinnest iPhone?” Or, you can ask, “with your phone can you call God?” We have used that to say with this one you can because “anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!”

We pray that the texting tract will open the door to many one on one conversations to share the Gospel. You can read about other witnessing encounters with this tract in the As You Go BLOG.

Each month it takes more than 50 man hours to pack the tracts to go into the mail. This includes ordering the tracts, counting them into stacks of 7, writing a letter, editing it, and printing it. The final step before going to the post office is a group of 10-15 people meet to pack the tracts into envelopes. This video is a time lapse of that process. It starts with dinner and fellowship and runs until the envelopes are nearly completely packed. This 4 minutes of video compresses nearly two hours of real-time!

One time I was sharing the Gospel at a park near my house. We like to do this by handing out bottles of water and Gospel tracts and then striking up conversations with people by saying “there is a warning that comes with the water, when you drink it you will get thirsty again.” Normally this would stop people in their tracks to consider that warning and a conversation would follow. On one occasion I got to talking to a guy and when the subject of religion and eternal life came up he said that would take to long to discuss. I said, that my beliefs were simple enough to explain in one minute.

He said “go” and started looking at his watch – the second hand.

I then provided him the Gospel and was done before he reached one minute!

On other occasions we have used a transitional line with people because they seem to think they will live forever. They won’t want to talk about death because they think it will happen years from now and they will have plenty of time to prepare. So if we are at a train station we might say, “what if you got run over by the next train and you were dead, do you know where you’d go?” Sometimes even reminding them that the news report indicated that someone had died recently at that very train station helps.

Ray Comfort has sermon called Three Minutes to Live that goes into more detail on this approach.

This tract uses the three minutes to live and the clock to draw the persons attention and then presents the Gospel on the back such that it can be read in less than three minutes!

To read about some examples of using this tract you can see the As You Go BLOG posts about it.

Nearly two years ago, the Lord placed it on my heart to write a book that could be handed out to people we witnessed to. I invited my friend Todd to co-author the book with me. We made a plan of how to split the writing up. After praying, writing, and editing we had a booklet that was ready to be printed. We researched many options to print the book and found that it was not cost effective to print for it’s intended purpose which was to give away. Mande and I took the book to Kinkos and printed a small run to at least be able to try and hand them out. While they were not polished(just a copy stapled) we were able to use them as an effective tool.

In May of last year while visiting some friends in the Houston area God led us to an old high school friend of mine who works for an on demand printer. As we talked more we discovered that his company was the perfect fit for printing our book. We could print 1 copy or 1,000′s of copies on demand at a reasonable price. WOW! God is Amazing.
I submitted a copy of the book to the printer (Snowfall Press) and had a couple of copies printed. I received them in the mail pretty quickly and was very impressed with how they turned out! Over the Christmas break I made a few edits and we now have a second edition ready to print. We also have the book as a PDF download and MOBI format for Kindle.

Please download a copy of the book The Truth May Impact Your Opinion and read it. The primary audience of the book is the person whom you are witnessing to, but the book also has serves as useful training for the believer who is witnessing.

The tract has a free book offer on it for this book. You can give the card out and the recipient can either download an electronic copy, listen to the audio or request a printed copy to be mailed to them.

To read the book yourself, listen to the audio or request your own copy now, you can go to
www.AfterLifeCatalog.com/truth/.

January 22 is the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the case that legalized abortion in the United States. We don’t want to “celebrate” the anniversary per se, but rather use it as a segway to the Gospel. I hand people this tract and ask them what they think of the quote. Most say something like “that’s interesting.” Other times I’ll hand someone the tract and ask them who the guy is in the picture. Most will say Ronald Reagan correctly. Then when I ask them who Ronald Reagan was, a smaller portion identify him as the 44th President of the United States. Either way, it functions as a segway to the gospel. Point people to the 180movie.com site on the back as well to see a Gospel presentation and a thought provoking message about abortion.

We hope and pray that the Ronald Reagan quote tract will bring awareness to the national sin of abortion. Even more than that, we pray that it will bring people to repent of their own personal sin and believe the Gospel!

Several months ago we released the Biggest Gamble tract. After sending it out, I received a call from one of the tract club members indicating that a new casino was opening near his favorite fishing hole and wondered what I thought of the idea of making a new tract for poker. We discussed it and prayed about it and came up with the idea for the Four Aces and a King tract.

The only thing that can beat Four Aces and a King is a straight flush. The odds are well into the 99.9′s that Four Aces and a King will win. The idea is simple. Find out if people like to gamble. If so, how much will they bet? For some, a couple dollars is exciting. For others it needs to be bigger, with more to risk.  Some people even gamble with their soul.

The reality is if someone is trusting in anything other than Jesus Christ to get them to eternity then they are taking a big gamble.

The first time I took some of these tracts out to the streets of Dallas, the conversations were mixed. Some thought I was promoting gambling. I explained that I was not promoting gambling and was able to have some conversations. One guy claimed that he had Four Aces and a King before and got beat so therefore if he got it again he would fold. I am not sure that I believe that!

Most people said they would bet something and that would lead to some discussion about how much they would bet. Five Dollars? Ten Dollars? Your job? Your house? Your soul? Most would stop short of betting with their soul.

So then I would ask them what happens when you die? If they say anything other than 100% confidence in going to Heaven because of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, then I would explain to them how they are gambling with their soul, taking a chance that they “might” go to Heaven.

I pray that you will have fun sharing the Gospel with these Four Aces and a King tracts.

There is an interesting quote that goes like this:

“Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you’ll be right.” H.H. “Breaker” Morant

When we make a new tract we like to hand out a number of them before sending them out in the tract club so that we know what kinds of responses people have when they get the tract. Sometimes, we invision it will be received one way and in reality it is received in an entirely different manner. With this tract, the expectation is that people want to “clean up” their life before they die. So in that case the idea of being ready to die makes sense. Some people will realize that they are not living in a way that they would want to stand before God. I’ve only had one person take it “the other way” in which case he was taking as he might as well live it up becasue he might die any time. Regardless, we have found that this tract has been well received. We handed out a few thousand of them a a Dallas Cowboys pre-season game!

We printed this on a tract and have been handing them out. I just hand it to people and ask them to ponder this interesting quote. From there it is a simple transition to ask them “so what do you think will happen after your last day” or “when you die?” This leads to some interesting conversations and the chance to share the Gospel. This tract will be featured in the October mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club!

This is the third version of the Where Will You Spend Eternity tract. The first version featured an offer for the book “One Heartbeat Away”. The second version features a QR Code that could be scanned with a smart phone to lead someone to an online Gospel presentation.

The question is a great transition question for a conversation. So we thought it was good to have a tract that had the question and the gospel right on the back. So we made a third version of the tract with that. All three versions are available for order.

A simple question “are you ready?” can open the door to some amazing spiritual conversations. We made t-shirts with the saying on it and then you don’t even have to open your mouth. Just walk into the mall and someone will ask you, “ready for what?” Boom, you are into a spiritual conversation talking about being ready for heaven, judgement or eternity.

The first version of the Are You Ready tract featured a single tombstone with the caption “your name here” on it. Several people commented that we are selling tombstones or something. The picture hit people hard. That prompted us to make the second version which instead of a single tombstone, showed a picture of a graveyard. Thinking this would alleviate the question of whether we were selling tombstones, one of the first people we gave it to asked if we were.

Regardless of the small objection to the tombstone, we have given out thousands of the first two version of this tract. Yet, something was drawing me to make a third version of it. This one with a hearse on it. This version has probably been the most impacting yet.

As I hand it out, I’ll ask, “Are You Ready?” and then normally follow that quickly with “it’s the last ride you will ever take!” Some people are so taken back by it that they want to hand the tract back. But others gratefully take it and it opens a great conversation. Looking at a hearse and considering that one day you will be in there makes one realize that this life is short and that ride will come eventually.

We pray that all three versions of this tract will be useful to you as you go and share the Gospel.

Jesus was the first to use water as a transition from the natural to the spiritual. Take a few minutes to read John 4 where Jesus speaks to the woman at the well.

At our outreaches we often give out bottles of water. We do this both on college campuses and at parks. People appreciate the free gift. And then they are shocked when we hand them the water and we say something like, “the water comes with a word of warning.” It stops them in their tracks and then we say something like “if you drink this water you will get thirsty again.” It really makes them stop and think. But it then allows us to quickly transition a conversation with a complete stranger to the truth of God’s word and talk about Jesus and the woman at the well.

By going to local colleges and parks we have literally given out thousands of bottles of water over the years. We use this passage from John 4. We even have signs that we use that advertise the free water that has the John 4 verse on it. Of course the water is merely bait to get them to also take a Gospel tract. So a few months ago it hit me, why not have a tract that actually has the John 4 story on it.

Hence this tract was made. Rather than a bottle of water on the front, we put a picture of water from the water fountain and the warning of being thirsty again. The back has the Gospel and then a link to a new area of the AfterLifeCatalog site with a video Gospel presentation.

The Whoever Drinks of this Water tracts will be sent out in the July 2012 mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club. We have already used them on three college campuses around Dallas. And we are continuing to have great conversations with people beginning with water and thirst. We pray that they will be useful for you in sharing the Gospel “as you go” and also for outreaches. Like all of our tracts, they can be ordered in bulk from One Million Tracts.

For more information about our college campus ministry that lead to the development of this tract please see the college category of the Bezeugen BLOG.