For some time now, I’ve been wanting to try out using a
Final Tally
whiteboard while doing Evangelism. Today we got our first chance. I first heard of the idea from Tim who has put together a Whiteboard Facebook group. The idea is that you put the whiteboard up on an easel with some question on it to take a survey and use that question to draw people into a spiritual conversation. Tim has a list of questions and results posted on his BLOG.
Wally and I had been discussing the idea. He found the materials at the hardware store and made the whiteboard for me. The board folds in half for easy transport.
We arranged to use the Free Speech area at Brookhaven College in Dallas. We set up the board and wrote “Do you consider yourself to be a good person?” on the top. As the kids walked by we would ask them if they had time for a quick one question survey. In an hour and a half we got 27 yes, 6 no and 4 I don’t know answers. That is 37 answers. In the same time we handed out about 150 bottles of water. So about 1 in four answered.
The great thing was that having the white board there lead to a number of conversations with the kids. In addition to Wally and I, David, Brian and Arnold were also there. I believe that all five of us were in near constant conversations with the kids the entire time that we were there at the college. At one point it seemed like each of us was actually talking to small groups of 3-5 kids each.
Carl with Whiteboard
Wally with Whiteboard
Witnessing at Brookhaven
Wally witnessing at the Whiteboard
Witnessing at Brookhaven
We’ve found that it seems God sends us just the number of people we can handle. If there is just one of us, he sends us people to mark on the board and people for that one person to talk with. If there are 4 of us, he sends us enough people for all 4 of us to talk with. It’s amazing to see how God sends them, and that He sends the right people for us to talk with. Every week at least it is as if a few are hand picked (naturally, He hands picks them all). He knows who should come and who shouldn’t come. It is amazing!
What about support? It gets windy alot here in Colorado
Stephen – we are still playing around with that. I have a portable easel, but it is highly affected by the wind. We also have tried a modified camera tripod which handled the wind better. What we have had to do in most cases with the wind here in Dallas is to use a bungee cord to strap the easel or tri-pod to something secure. Last weekend at the church garage sale I leaned the easel up against a tree such that the wind was blowing towards the face of the whiteboard. Will continue to experiment with this. But, I am thinking we may need a higher end trip-pod that have the hook to attach weight to hold it in place.