Bezeugen Tract Club

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.

We have taught our Basic Evangelism Training Seminar over 50 times. Each time we teach it we get to a point in the seminar where we ask “what stops you from sharing the Gospel?” Family Feud style, the overwhelming number one answer is FEAR!

Now fear comes in several forms. It might be the fear of not knowing what to say. The fear of rejection. The fear of embarrassment. At a seminar in Rockwall, TX recently a woman in the very back row of the sanctuary raised her hand and said “the fear of man.” WOW! Bingo! She was right on.

In our seminar we have added a slide to discuss the fear of man verses the fear of God. The purpose of the seminar and the ministry ultimately, is to help remove that fear of man so that people can share the Gospel.

One effective way we have found to do that is using the Bible Bookmark tract along with a New Testament or Outreach Bible. We are sending two of these tracts in the tract club each month to encourage you to have conversations with people. There is also some more information on that on the AfterLifeCatalog site which will also be relevant to this tract.

I personally have gotten to where I will carry a New Testament with me. But, sometimes I don’t. So what about those times when I don’t have the New Testament? For those times, we have made this tract. It has the same ten questions as the bookmark. But in this case, it also has the verse right there on the card. You can use this as a pocket reference to help you memorize the verses. You can give it out to people. Or you can use it to have a one on one conversation asking them to read each verse and answer each question.

Here is how we use it. We start a conversation with someone in the natural realm just talking about anything we can. Eventually we swing the conversation to the spiritual with the specific point being to ask them what they believe happens when they die. If what they say aligns with the Bible, then we can be fairly confident that they are a Christian. If not, then we ask, “have you ever considered what does the Bible say about that?” This leads directly into the ten questions and Bible verses on the card.

At this point you can hand them the card and walk off. Or you can continue with the conversation having them read each question and verse and then answer the question.

We pray that the What Does the Bible say tract will help you overcome the fear of man and share the Gospel with people you meet. Except for the questions, the rest of the tract is entirely quoted from the Bible. We know that God’s word does not return void, we we are confident that these tracts will also be used by Him!

When having a conversation with someone about the Gospel there are thousands of ways to transition the conversation from the natural to the spiritual. One that we have found to be effective is to ask people “do you have life assurance?” Most people hear that you said INsurance rather than ASsurance. So it gives a chance to go back and emphasize that you asked about assurance, not insurance.

My friend Todd came up with this idea a number of years ago. We have been using it for a long time. And we have been praying about this tract for a long time to. I think it was about three years ago that we first wrote some notes up on making this into a tract. But, it took a long time to come up with the way to present it that would work. We thought about making it look like an insurance card. That might have been a nice idea. However, then we could not figure out even what that would look like.

Finally we decided on an approach to just compare life insurance with life assurance. We put down some definitions to show the difference. Life insurance benefits the survivors. But, life assurance benefits the dead man!

At long last we had the text and it fit on the card. But the whole card was black and white. That looked pretty boring. So we went back to prayer. Finally, one day I was talking to Todd on the phone about the design of the tract. I suggested that the Life of the Life Insurance and the Assurance of the Life Assurance could be colored red to make them stand out. Then he suggested a drop of blood coming down from the Assurance. When I got home, I changed the tract to a black background and adjusted the colors of the words. I found an image of a drop of blood and put it on the front. That made it look better. Then for the back, a drop of blood splattering. Like so many drops of blood that splattered while Jesus was nailed to and hung on the cross. It made a powerful visual statement. One last review and we knew we were done!

We sent them to be printed and they arrived a few days later. Like we always do, we started using the new tracts right away so that we could get some experience with them. So off to the mall to talk to some people. One woman in the parking lot thought I was trying to sell her insurance. But I said, no, it is much more important than insurance. She took the tract and read it. Inside the mall I made conversation with the woman working at the “dipping dots” kiosk. I started the conversation with her asking if the company offered her benefits including Life Insurance. She said yes. From there I was able to transition the conversation to ask about Life Assurance. She was not 100% assured. But she learned how she can be by the time we walked off.

We have handed out a few thousand of these new tracts by now. The Life Assurance Tract will be shipped in the June 2012 mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club.

About a year ago, a friend and member of the tract club, posted the draft of a tract on Facebook. He was asking for some feedback on it. I made a few comments. A few months later some others posted comments on the tract so it popped back up on my facebook timeline. When I saw it again it hit me that it would make a nice tract for the tract club. So I asked Chris for permission to print it and he agreed.

When the tract arrived we started handing them out around town. Since people like to gamble on things, it made a good discussion starter. We started having many discussions with people. Asking them if they like to gamble, how much they would bet and if they would bet with their soul.

We then sent some of the tracts to Scott, who posts to the As You Go BLOG, and he started using them around the casinos in Louisiana. He was having really good success sharing the Gospel with people there.

Since the tract went out in the tract club, I heard from another friend in Ohio that a casino is opening up near their favorite fishing hole. So we sent a box of Biggest Gamble tracts to Ohio to be distributed when the new casino opens.

We pray that the Biggest Gamble tract will lead many to understand that your soul is not to be gambled with. But that through repentance and faith in Jesus the soul can have eternal life!

Over the weekend I got an email asking if we had a Wrestling Trivia tract. The gentleman explained that he is going to St Louis in mid-March for the NCAA Wrestling Championship and wanted a Wrestling tract for the occasion. I told him that although I did not have a tract for that, that we could easily make one. I asked him to send me the trivia questions and I would put the tract together.

We use the same back on all of our trivia tracts. What that means for you, the person handing out the tracts, is that you can quiz anybody on any of the trivia questions, even without knowing anything about what is on the tract. How? Well, since the back is the same, that means the answers are all the same from one trivia tract to the next. The answers are always a, b, c, b, and death!

The Wrestling Trivia tract is now available to be ordered online.

In the middle of last summer, one of our tract club members referred the tract club

Soccer Trivia

to a teacher at a school in Ohio. That teacher called me and asked if we had a Spanish Soccer Trivia tract. I told her that we did not, but that I would consider making one. I asked the purpose of the tract. She told me that she was leading a mission trip in January to El Salvador and that they wanted to take the tract on the mission trip with them. After praying about it, it seemed like a good project to participate in.

The back of the tract was simple. We had already done a number of trivia tracts for football, baseball, basketball and hockey and all of those tracts use the same text on the back. We’d simply need to get the text translated. I contacted my translator and she did the translation for me.

The front of the tract was a bit more complicated. Unlike when I made the tracts for football, baseball, basketball and hockey, I know next to nothing about soccer. So I would have to do some research. As I researched, I realized that it was not as easy as I thought. With football, I could simply go with statistics and records. But with soccer, I was unsure if people, especially around the world would know the answers to these questions.

So, I realized that I needed some help. Where else to get help – but Facebook! Yes,

Soccer Trivia (Spanish)

I actually posted several times on Facebook that I was looking for help generating questions for a soccer trivia tract. I got several people who had some good trivia questions to use. And I got a friend who said she would ask her kids who knew a lot about soccer. In the end, I had about 6-10 questions to choose from.

Once the English version of the questions were done, I found some clip art online and laid out the tract making sure the questions would fit and there was enough room for the text to be big enough to display.

I then sent the text of those questions to my translator. In a few days, I had the translation of the questions back. I put those into photoshop, had some proof readers review everything and then had both the English and Spanish versions printed.

I packed up a box of about 3,500 tract including mostly the Spanish soccer trivia

Reading the Tract

tract, but also some English versions and a few other tracts that we had on hand and mailed them to the teacher in Ohio. At the conclusion of the mission trip, I received an email which in part states:

Thank you so much for the tracts in Spanish! The junior and senior students just returned from a mission trip to El Salvador where the soccer trivia tracts were put to good use for the Lord. I have attached some photos of the recipients of the tracts. The soccer trivia tract was a super way to introduce the gospel in a non-invasive manner. I simply started out with “Do you like soccer?” and turned it into a game of soccer trivia which lead to the most important question of where they will spend eternity. I love having this witnessing tool available and the El Salvadorians received the tract as an honored gift from a new friend. The tracts are so handsome, many people lined up to get one and they requested more tracts for others in their family. It was incredible!

We at Bezeugen count it a privilege to be a part of reaching the uttermost parts of the earth with the Gospel. It continues to amaze me how our small ministry in North Texas is being used by God to share the Gospel around the globe.

The Major League Soccer season begins in March. We are planning an outreach at the FC Dallas game. We have also included English and Spanish versions of the Soccer Trivia tract in the March mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club. Trivia tracts are a great way to start a conversation, segway to the spiritual and then share the Gospel.

Here is a secret: all of our trivia tracts have the same answers: a, b, c, b. This allows anyone to use any of the trivia tracts even without knowing any of the answers and quiz someone on the trivia questions and know if they got the right answer!

One of my friends sent me an email one day asking if we have a tract with the Ten Commandments on it. The question caught me off guard because each of the tracts has some of the Ten Commandments – on the back. My friend responded, “no, I meant with the Ten Commandments on the front.”

So we made this tract!

We have been using these since October around Dallas at various outreaches. They have been very well received. Originally I had thought that the tract might be hard to hand out and that people might tend to reject it. However, I think it is a God thing the way the Law on the tract connects with the Law written on their heart and they gladly receive the tract.

These tracts are easy to use in a conversation especially when using the Law to examine a person if they have sinned. Duane used this tract as well as the Are You Ready tract in conjunction. Please watch this video for some training on using these tracts together.

We pray that the Ten Commandments tract will be useful in your witnessing.