Throughout this summer, we have been placing tracts in mailboxes in our town. Up until yesterday, we had distributed about 10,000 tracts. From those thousands of tracts, we had received one response. An elderly lady named Maria contacted us with questions. She had recently moved to our town and was looking for a church.
Sarah and I met with her at a café and listened to her story. She is from a Pentecostal background, but she didn’t like any of the Pentecostal churches she had visited in our town. Last Friday, she came to our Bible study and seemed to enjoy it. We will see what happens in the future with her.
On Tuesday I took Laura with me to pass out some more tracts. Walking from house to house, I thought about the statistical value of what I was doing – 1 response for 10,000 tracts. Not exactly the best of odds. After an hour and half, Laura was tired and so I decided to head home. As I put her in her car seat I thought, “Well, now we are up to 10,300.”
That very evening I received an e-mail from a man who received one of our tracts. He wanted to know where we met and had services. I promptly replied, gave him the information he requested, and asked if he would like to meet with me. The next morning, I received an e-mail back from him: “Yes, I would like to meet with you. How about tonight?”
That evening for almost two hours I walked and talked with Luis. Here were some of his questions:
Do you have to be baptized to be saved?
What is required for a person to be saved?
What distinguishes your beliefs from other churches?
How do you interpret Genesis and Revelation? Are they literal?
What does it mean to love God?
From our conversation, I gathered that he was a man who was searching for answers and who already knew a lot about the Bible. As we said goodbye and made plans to meet again, he remarked, “I know it wasn’t a coincidence that I received your pamphlet in the mail and that I met you.”
I agree.