Bezeugen BLOG

As 2009 draws to a close, we look forward to the many things that God has for us to do in 2010. But, before we go there, I thought it would be good to take a few minutes to reflect on what God has done through Bezeugen Ministries in 2009.

Bezeugen Tract Club
This was the first full year of the tract club. In December, we passed 160 members. We now have members in more than 24 states as well as three foreign countries. Tract club members either live in or have taken our tracts to five continents (all except Australia and Antarctica). Not a member yet? Please consider enrolling today! We also started a monthly Tract Club conference call on the second Monday of each month at 9PM Central. We look forward to speaking with you on one of these calls to hear about your witnessing encounters.

Tracts
We developed a number of new tracts including Why?, 2+2, Chicken and Egg, Bailout, Get Out of Hell Free (Chance and Community Chest), Good News/Bad News, Christmas Trivia, New Year Resolution. The ministry has ordered and distributed over 140,000 gospel tracts this year. Just two years ago, our goal was to distribute 10,000 tracts in a year. This year, we distributed more tracts than that in one day (Dallas Christmas Parade – see below).


Ally of Living Waters Ambassadors’ Alliance
In May, I was able to attend the Ambassadors’ Academy. It was a true blessing. The training has equipped me for open air preaching. The friends I met there are a tremendous blessing. In June, Bezeugen Ministries became an Ally of the Ambassadors’ Alliance.

OU-BYU
In September, we organized an outreach at the Oklahoma versus Brigham Young football game. We developed a special “Oklahoma Trivia” gospel tract for the event. We had eight evangelists on the streets of Arlington with us and handed out over 7,000 Gospel tracts in one day. Coupled with open air preaching and an estimate that we handed a tract to one out of four people, we believe that over 25,000 people heard the Gospel that day!

Dallas Christmas Parade
In December, we organized an outreach to the Dallas Christmas parade. The parade drew 350,000 spectators (according to the Dallas Morning News). We had 20 evangelists on the street. We distributed over 12,000 gospel tracts.

Project Ezra
We got involved with Project Ezra for the public reading of God’s Word. I spent many Sunday mornings reading God’s Word at the nature preserve. I’ve also enjoyed reading the Bible in the open air with several good friends that I also met this year. 

Door to Door ministry
This summer, God laid it on my heart to go door to door to share the Gospel. I’ve started in my neighborhood and have a vision to take the Gospel door to door to every house in the City of Carrollton. A separate BLOG provides status updates and how you can pray for the effort. Since starting this effort, I’ve visited about 500 houses. I’ve also trained the pastor and members of a local church on the method and they are sharing the Gospel door to door near their church.

Basic Evangelism Training Seminar
We presented eleven more evangelism training seminars this year (one every month except December). We made a number of updates to the presentation. Expanded the Biblical Basis and Evangelism Quotes sections. In addition to the sessions we held ourselves, we had a church in Farmers Branch host a seminar as well! Developed “As You Go” series which includes suggest “pre-work” for the seminar.

Online
Made a number of updates to both the Bezeugen and the AfterLifeCatalog websites. Also started this BLOG! Recorded a number of videos and posted them on YouTube.

Partnerships
We have been blessed to partner with others in our ministry. I am thankful to One Million Tracts for helping to  develop and print Gospel tracts. I am thankful for the partnerships with The Lost Cause Ministries and Jeremiah Cry Ministries as we have hit the streets together. I appreciate the support, training and encouragement provided by Living Waters and the Ambassador’s Alliance. Partnered with Duane Seaberg who will be able teach the Basic Evangelism Training Seminar in various places around the country.

Looking ahead to 2010
Looking ahead to 2010, I am sure that the Lord has much for us to do for Him. We look forward to the challenges and the blessings that come with serving Him. I am registered to attend the Super Bowl Outreach. Mande is registered to attend the Ambassadors Academy. We invite you to go door to door in your neighborhood and register your efforts on our map. I’d like to invite you to join us on the streets, going door to door or handing out tracts with the tract club. We appreciate your prayers. If you believe in what we are doing, perhaps you would consider a tax deductible donation to the ministry.

Some have said that maybe we should not witness at shopping malls. However I came across this verse that I think validates the practice.

“So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.” Acts 17:17 (ESV)

The marketplace of Paul’s day was where the people conducted business. Today that is done in shopping malls, stores and other similar locales.

So, I think if Paul were alive today we would see him witnessing at the mall!

On Saturday, I visited 35 house, shared the Gospel one on one with 13 people, gathered 11 prayer requests and collected 86 food items. This brings the totals to 445, 122 one on one conversations, 80 prayer requests and 347 food items collected. The map below shows the area covered. The push pin in my house. I use the highlighter to track where I have been. Thanks for your continued prayers for this effort.

On Saturday, I went out door to door for two hours. I changed my tactics slightly for this day. Instead of collecting food for MetroCrest, I decided earlier in the week to collect the food for “a family in need.” You see, my wifes family has decided that this Christmas rather than exchanging gifts with the adults we would adopt a family in the community and give gifts to them! When we looked at the needs, we realized food was a big one. So, I prayerfully decided to designate the food collected on this trip into the neighborhood to give directly to this family. Instead of my normal “MetroCrest” flyer that I put on my clip board, I made a flyer describing a “Bezeugen Ministries food drive to benefit a family in need in the neighborhood.” With that, I set out.

As I proceeded down the street, I was overwhelmed with generous food donations. People were giving more than normally. In the past each house that gave would give a couple (maybe three) cans of food. But, on this day, the bags were coming back with five, six, seven and up to ten cans of food in them. As I continued down the street, I had to stop and rearrange the food in the cart. Then as I went to a couple of more houses, the cart was overflowing again. By this time I was a half a mile from home. I did not want to “waste time” walking back home to put the food away and not be able to stop at any houses since I could not carry any more food. So I called my wife to see if she could come and pick up the food. However, she was not nearby so she could not. I continued on anyway and was sharing the Gospel at each house. Finally, I had so much food that it would not stay in the cart. The cart was full and I had two full bags of food in my hand. And I was a full half mile from home as I came back up the other side of the street. I posted a message to facebook thinking maybe one of my friends could come and pick up the food. However, I got no response.

Finally, as I prayed the Lord lead me to an answer. I had just spoken with a believer on the other side of the street. I went back to their house and told them my delimma. I asked if I could ust leave the food on their porch for an hour and a half and then I would come back for it. They agreed. I lightened my load and proceeded on up the street. Eventually my wife was on her way home and she stopped at that house and picked up the food for me.

On a typical door to door outing, food collections are about 1 can per three houses. On this day, the food collection was nearly three cans per house! After visiting 35 houses, I had collected 86 cans of food to donate to this family. I had also shared the Gospel one on one 13 times and gathered 11 prayer requests.

Please pray for all of the people that I shared the Gospel with that they may come to salvation through Jesus Christ.

As I have been going door to door, I take down prayer requests. Some people get added to our prayer list, even if they don’t mention a prayer request. How is that, you might ask? If in the course of discussion, it is determined that the person is not a Christian, then I add a prayer request for their salvation. In many of these cases, the person had not given me their name. So, we have ended up with a number of prayer cards that say “Name: not given” or “Name: Unknown”. Now God knows who the person is living at such and such an address, so when we pray God knows the need. However, I’ve found a way to make the pray even more personal. Whitepages.com offers a “reverse lookup!” With reverse lookup you can look up a name based on knowing the address or the phone number. It’s not 100 percent – probably due to unlisted and such, but it is at least in the 95 percentile based on searches that I have done. So, next time you are praying over that prayer card where you did not get their name, go look it up in the Whitepages Reverse Lookup!

On Saturday, December 5th, Bezeugen Ministries organized an outreach at the Dallas Christmas Parade. We had twenty evanelists join us on the streets of Dallas including a number of folks from The Lost Cause Ministries and Jeremiah Cry Ministries. We had five Ambassadors’ Academy alumn (three from #10 and two from #11). Adam join us from Oklahoma City. Jerad joined us from Eldorado. And two folks joined us from Texarkana! Many thanks to everyone for coming out! With 20 people hitting the streets, this was by far our largest outreach yet! Unfortunately, we did not get a picture of all 20 of us together, however here is one picture with 14 of us.

The weather was extremely cold. But, the joy of the Lord kept us warm. (The hand warms helped some. Thanks to Paul!) I believe it was about 30 degrees when we arrived. It was reported on TV that the wind chill factor was 18 degrees. We did not let the cold weather persuade us.

Our main location was at Main and Akard. We congregated at 7:30AM. After opening with a prayer, we shared some basic instructions and then split up to cover as many corners as we could. Many people enter the parade area from Main and Akard. But, it is possible to get to the parade route from any number of intersections, so we wanted to cover as much ground as we could. We were able to give out many tracts as people entered into the parade area. We had a number of one on one conversations with people as well.

We stationed people on three of the four corners of Main and Akard. One one of the corners we had Adam, Jerad, myself and a few others open air preaching. As people came across the street, they got tracts from the people at the other sides of the street.

I brought my cross and carried it around as well. Many people would come and take tracts from me even while carrying the cross.

Roy was able to share the Gospel with Santa and even gave him a Gospel tract!

After the parade, the crowd disperses quickly. I loaded all of the pockets of my jacket with stacks of tracts and headed out onto Commerce Street. I followed the parade around to the end handing out tracts to everyeone that I could. It is hard to get a tract to everyone because there are so many people. All of the rest of those in our group were doing the same thing. Just to give an idea of how many people there were, I did not even see any of our group until I finally found Jeff in front of City Hall.

Afterwards, we meet at Subway for lunch and fellowhip. Adam told me about one one-on-one conversation that Jerad had with a man on the street. He told me that when Jerad asked, “when are you going to repent” the man said, “I will do it today!” Praise God!

We saw very few tracts on the ground. But at least this one tract fell on rocky soil. (So I picked it up and threw it away).

Additional photos from the event are available on my Facebook album.

The Dallas Morning News estimates that the parade was attended by 350,000 people. We handed out at least 11,000 Gospel tracts. Coupled with Open Air preaching, even more heard the Gospel! Perhaps you can join us next year and we can hand out even more tracts and reach more people with the good news of the Gospel.

There is another parade in Dallas on January 1st. Let me know if you are interested in coming to join us. We can hand out our new New Year Resolutions tract!

Jon and Tim reported that they went onto Commerce Street and then open air preached right to the crowds awaiting the beginning of the parade. Parade organizers had no problem with them doing this! I am sure that Jon Speed will provide more detail in The Lost Cause BLOG within a few days. Be sure to check that out for additional reports on the event.

Christmas is under attack. Many stores no longer have Christmas sales. Instead, they have “holiday” sales. When you ask them what holiday they are referring too, they say things like “do you mean the holiday on December the 25th?” I have already addressed ways to deal with this issue and even share the Gospel with store managers and employees who work for these companies in a previous BLOG post.

In this entry, I turn my attention to organizations that are specifically attacking the Christmas Tree. Lately, as I go to the malls, I find they are already decorated for Christmas. Yes, it is amazing, even before Thanksgiving. Yet, when I walk up to people and say, “what do you call that” and point at the Christmas tree, some will say “holiday tree?” Where do they get it? Much of it is coming from the government and other organizations like the ACLU that continually try to remove Christ from Christmas.

Jesus says to come like a little child. So our idea was to have a child, our youngest son,  draw a picture of a Christmas tree, then make it available for all to print and mail to the ACLU and other offices that may be attacking Christmas.

Let’s not let the government or other groups take Christmas away from us or even minimize its value. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Lord and savior. It’s worth respecting. It’s worth protecting.

Here is what you can do. Download and print the “It’s called a CHRISTmas tree” file and then mail it to the addresses below.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
(whitehouse.gov contact page requests including your email address)

ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

If you have other suggested destinations for Christmas letters then please add a comment and I'll update the blog.

There has been a lot of discussion about the Manhattan Declaration. I have found it interesting what a number of Christian leaders are writting as their reasons for not signing this document. Mainly, I find myself thanking God that these leaders see the Gospel as so important that they will not compromise that by signing the Manhattan Declaration. I include John MacArthur’s initial point here:

 Although I obviously agree with the document’s opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and other key moral problems threatening our culture, the document falls far short of identifying the one true and ultimate remedy for all of humanity’s moral ills: the gospel. The gospel is barely mentioned in the Declaration. At one point the statement rightly acknowledges, “It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season”—and then adds an encouraging wish: “May God help us not to fail in that duty.”  Yet the gospel itself is nowhere presented (much less explained) in the document or any of the accompanying literature. Indeed, that would be a practical impossibility because of the contradictory views held by the broad range of signatories regarding what the gospel teaches and what it means to be a Christian.

Dan Phillips has a blog post with nineteen questions for signers of the Manhattan Declaration.

I decided to dedicate this blog entry to collecting links to those articles of leaders who have not signed it:

• Alistair Begg
• John MacArthur
• Frank Turk