Welcome to the Team

Our cost per contact is just 11.3 cents per household — which is a very good rate. If we achieve our goal of raising the level of basic biblical literacy in our community and making personal evangelism by fellow Christians in the area easier to do and more effective, it is well worth the cost.

However, though this cost-per-contact is a good deal, this fee adds up to a substantial financial expense. My costs for advertising space thus far have been $1227 per article. This pays for distribution to 11,000 addresses by U.S. mail per issue. It is my hope that other individuals, owners of businesses, and pastors of local churches will join me in supporting this work with a generous monthly investment.

Let’s be honest. In our businesses, we are used to using the most cost-effective approaches available to communicate with our community. We know that the cost per contact is the number that matters most and not the total expense. If the medium works it will pay for itself from the results. But when it comes to completing the Great Commission, the Christian community, at the individual church level and as the church community as a whole, has a history of putting nearly all of its resources into everything but bold, local conversion-oriented evangelism. Our retirement plans, business expansion and church building maintenance, staff salaries, in-church programs and foreign missions are all fully and routinely funded, but not our LOCAL evangelism, which is the one thing we will wish we had done more of 10,000 years from now. Publishing these evangelist articles is an attempt to do better. Investing in effective evangelism is laying up our treasure in heaven where it cannot be lost. It is using our unrighteous mammon to make friends for ourselves in eternal habitations. He who wins souls is wise and will shine as the stars forever.

Our Strategy

From the first century, up until the modern age, marketplaces have served as the primary social context in which to provide, both products/ services and news and information. In the past town criers, troubadours, philosophers, and religious teachers all spoke routinely to crowds that would gather in the marketplace to shop. We see this even in the New Testament during the time of the Apostles. More importantly, people expected to encounter news and instruction in the marketplace. This put them into a receptive state of mind, similar to when one opens a newspaper or magazine to read whatever is there.

But in modern times, we have separated the marketplace from the news media. Today the marketplace, as in shopping centers, malls, and even the public sidewalks out in front of retail stores, are no longer places for transmitting news and information. Rather they are now only places to buy goods and services. This shift has made it socially unexpected and therefore normally unacceptable to be approached while shopping by any presentation of news, much less the good news of the gospel. Receptivity is therefore very low in the modern marketplace.

However, whenever someone opens a newspaper, magazine, or news website, he or she is, in effect, asking to be presented with news and information, along with advertising.

This provides the evangelical churches with an ideal opportunity for presenting the gospel concerning Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God to an audience that is open and receptive, not in the style of an advertisement, but in the style of a feature lifestyle article or essay, that relates to some topic of general interest tom the reader. Doing so not only provides a bold but respectful, direct presentation of the gospel, but also raises the level of biblical literacy of the readership by introducing and explaining biblical concepts that can then be used by Christians in the community to converse openly with their neighbors concerning Christ, His resurrection, the new birth, faith, repentance, and the meaning of salvation.

This Strategy is not New

In the 1700s, and right up until the middle of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for local newspapers to publish entire sermons and evangelistic essays by great Christian preachers and apologists such as George Whitefield, C.H. Spurgeon and D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday, C.S. Lewis, and Billy Graham, all free of charge. Doing so actually helped to sell newspapers!

Unfortunately, those days are now long gone. Living as we do in a post-Christian culture, with a general bias against Christianity, the typical newspaper or magazine owner is unwilling to publish evangelistic articles without requiring the author to purchase advertising space at the going rate. This confronts the church with the challenge to “put our money where our heart is.” Most of our neighbors are dying without Christ. They are ignorant of the gospel and unwilling to seek out and read Christian books and literature. However, a faithfully-written article placed in a local newspaper is stumbled upon by the reader like any other news article. This gives the Holy Spirit all that is needed to press upon the heart and mind of a modern unbeliever his or her need for the Savior, Jesus Christ. That is why I believe it is wise for us to invest substantial amounts of money, personally as individuals, as area businesses, and as local churches, in the publication of bold, clearly-written evangelistic articles and essays.

Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is

If you agree, please “put your money where your heart is” as well by supporting this effort financially. At the same time, pray routinely for those like myself who are writing these articles that we will do so with wisdom and skill. Pray also for those who are reading these articles that they will receive the truth they need in order to believe the truth in their hearts and be saved.

In addition, make it part of your routine each month to use each article as a conversation starter with your family members, neighbors, and friends. Try this. Show them the article in the paper. Ask them if they have read it, and if not, give them a moment to do so while you wait (prayerfully). Then, ask them what they think about the information presented. Be ready to listen and then clarify what the article is saying.

Whenever the opportunity presents itself, tell them the story of what you were like before you trusted in Christ as your Lord. Tell them the story of how God brought you to put your faith in Jesus. And finally, tell them what difference knowing and following Jesus has made in your life. Explain why you trust in Jesus enough to actually obey His command to love one another.

Our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What He has done so graciously in the past He can also do today as we pray, write & speak “all the words of this life.” I hope you will join me in this great adventure in evangelism.

Sincerely in the service of the Great Commission,

Gregg Harris 503-926-1388