Our friend Phil Cooke recently tipped us off to this story:
Mary Hutchinson of Inspired Direct, a direct mail and fundraising company for non-profits, churches, and ministries, conducted an interesting experiment recently. She sent a simple letter, under an assumed name, to dozens of TV ministries that claim to be about "winning the lost." She enclosed a $20 bill with each letter and asked "how to accept Jesus in my heart."
The good news: She got responses from 95 percent of the ministries. The bad? Less than 25 percent gave her a simple, direct answer to her question about how to become a Christian.
Hutchinson writes: "If we are really about evangelism, how could this be? The most impressive of all responses was a simple letter from a smaller ministry that walked me down the road to salvation. It was personal, direct and spoke to me from the heart. A few others had small books dedicated to doing that as well; they just presented it in a more formal manner. Another 20 percent sent me packages that contained a book, or a handful of books and DVDs, but none gave a direct answer to the most important question of all. In fact, one up-and-coming TV preacher sent me such a large package of "stuff" that it cost him $8.10 to mail it to me!"
Read Hutchinson's observations here.
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