A few weeks back, we asked for your humbling/embarrassing outreach stories. Well, the five winning entries have been chosen! Check them out below and see if you can relate.
When I was a junior in college, working on my ministry degree, several of my classmates and I decided that we would do some door-knocking in the neighborhoods near our campus. As the day progressed, we made several good contacts, but one of the houses that we came to will always stand out.
A teenage girl answered the door, so we asked if we could speak to her parents, but she got really nervous. We assured her that we were from the Christian university in town and could come back at another time, and she got even more nervous. Finally she told us that her dad was one of the security officers at our university–the one who wrote the majority of the parking tickets. She was afraid that we were going to come back and TP her house!
JD Eddins
Searcy, Arkansas
As a relatively new missionary in Brazil a few years back, we had the blessing of working with a college volunteer team coming to help us get our ministry kick-started. We decided that we would use a survey to help assess some of the perceived needs in the community. We took the college kids door-to-door and asked them to engage the person that answered the door in English; we would step in to translate into Portuguese.
At the first house we came to, I tried to translate the word “survey,”which is pesquisa in Portuguese. Instead, however, I said piscina–”swimming pool.” The Brazilian lady at the door just looked at us and wondered, “Why are these Americans coming to our country to build swimming pools?” We laughed about it later, but it was a little embarrassing at the time…
John Shelton
Anderson, South Carolina
Many years ago we moved to Madison, Wisconsin to pastor Lake City Church, which was in a tough section of the city. Going door to door we were scolded, sworn at, and had our literature torn up. Nothing seemed to work. Then, just before Easter, we set a goal to go over 100 in attendance for that Sunday. So my fevered brain came up with an idea: give everyone who attended a baby chick.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Chicks pecked their way out of an egg, pretty much like Christ’s resurrection out of the grave! So there you have it, a theological basis for this outreach. I couldn’t find baby chicks anywhere, though, so in my desperation I went with baby ducks. Being a young pastor of great faith, I bought 200!
As people came into the Easter morning service, they heard a concert of “cheeping” ducklings above everything else. I was sure everyone would be primed, excited, and enthused to bring all of their friends to receive such a prize gift. They weren’t! Most everyone went home with three or four little ducks. And no, we never tried that outreach again.
Warren Heckman
FCA National Coordinator
Burnsville, Minnesota
I was on an outreach errand with a fellow believer, doing colporteur evangelism (carrying literature) in an apartment house. We had sold several Bibles and Christian books. All was going great. At the following door, we rang the bell. After several minutes of waiting, we heard someone approach the door quietly and then retreat. We rang the bell once more. Nothing.
We looked at each other for a moment, and then it hit us! We remembered a motivational story told at a recent colporteur meeting about a man who wanted to hang himself but eventually opened the door and was encouraged to live by the guys who, like us, were there to tell him about Jesus.
So we began to ring again, insistently and relentlessly. Suddenly the door opened wide. A savage-looking man stood there and cried, “What do you want?”
“To tell you the Good News,” we hummed, terrified.
“Oh, you ––ed idiots! I wanted to put my baby to sleep! You ––ed Christian idiots! Get away, you idiots!”
Pastor Yaroslav Paliy
Moscow, Russia
Hearing from another pastor about the great success he enjoyed with “Friend Day,” I suggested that our small church hold such an event. Our committees worked on refreshments, visitor gifts, decorations, and special worship activities. We talked about how to initiate faith conversations and gently invite friends to church. We promoted the event weeks ahead of time and prayed for our friends to respond positively to an invitation to worship.
When the big day finally came, we had a grand total of…one friend. Since the entire service was geared around welcoming all the friends we had been expecting, our one visitor received quite a bit of attention! The awkwardness of having only one friend in spite of all the effort was met good-naturedly, but I was still profoundly disappointed. Only one friend!
That friend, however, began regularly attending our church. It wasn’t long before she herself brought a friend to church, who in turn brought along her two young grandchildren. When we decided to try this outreach event again, we had more than 20 friends join us. I’ve learned never to scoff at “mustard seed” results!
Pastor Jon Truax
Alliance, Ohio
