Bezeugen Tract Club

We have found that having tracts that fit the event really help the ability to hand them out. For instance, instead of saying “did you get one of these” you can also say “Football Trivia for you” or whatever the tract is for the event.

At the beginning of the football season, we release a generic Football Trivia tract.  Over the course of the season we have printed versions for the NFL, Oklahoma Sooners, Dallas Cowboys and St Louis Rams.

The Super Bowl is coming to Dallas. So we decided to make a version of the tract with Super Bowl Trivia. To get the questions, we asked for input. We got a lot of great questions. The top questions were used on the tract.

The February mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club will include the Super Bowl trivia tracts. If you are attending a super bowl party, you might take them along to share with those that are attending! Need some? Enroll today!

We also have a supply of these tracts for the Super Bowl Outreach!

We hope that you enjoy receiving your supply of 30 FREE Gospel tracts each month. We pray that each and every tract we send is handed out, read and used by God to plant a seed of faith into the person who received it.

I thought you might be interested to know what goes into producing a mailing of the tract

Packing the tracts!

club. Due to the use of bulk mail it takes one to three weeks for the tracts to reach places around the country once we put them in the mail. Our goal is to have them arrive by the first of each month. We general packaged the tract club envelopes on the first Monday of each month and then mail them during the next week. In order to package the envelopes, we first write and proof a letter. Normally this is done about two weeks in advance of the mailing. The letter is printed online to a FedEx Kinkos in the Dallas metroplex where Roy picks up the letters and then folds them for us.

Having fun packing tracts!

The letter provides information about each tract that is included in the mailing. The tracts are mostly designed by Bezeugen Ministries, however, we also use tracts from those made by One Million Tracts. Typically we put three different tracts in each envelope. Sometimes there might be four tracts. With three tracts then each envelope would have ten of each of the three. With four tracts, then there would be two that have five each.

We have a team of people including Steve, Nita, Jackeye, Ellen, and Mande who count the tracts into stacks of ten. Steve has designed a box to hold the counted tracts and then transport them to my house on the night of the packaging. Until more of these boxes are done, we are also able to pre-count tracts back into the boxes that they are shipped to us in. Generally we are ordered tracts at least a month before the First Monday that they would be packaged to give time to pack them.

The envelopes have historically been printed by my wife. That is a tireless job of feeding stacks of 15-20 envelopes into the printer. Even with a new printer that has already been replaced once this year under warranty, it frequently jams causing delays and frustration. Our plan is to start ordering the envelopes already printed!

Finally the first Monday rolls around. We get together at 6:30 PM for food and fellowship. At 7PM we clear the tables and get to work. Depending how many people we have, we set up assembly lines. The first person takes a letter, and puts a stack of tracts on it. The next person puts two more stacks of the counted tracts on it. The next person folds over the letter and puts it in the envelope. The next person seals the envelope. And finally a label is placed on the envelope. The steps of the assembly line are adjusted based on the speed of each person and to keep things flowing smoothly. In addition to those who help count the tracts and fold the letters we also have regular help stuffing envelopes from Deb, Ellen, Ramona, Brendan, and others!

On January 3rd, we had 13 helpers (including first time helpers: Bill, Bobby, Amy and Ann)! With this we had four assembly lines going simultaneously. I worked in the background restocking the letters, envelopes and stacks of tracts to keep the others moving.

After the tracts are in envelopes they are put into bulk mailing trays with about 100 envelopes per tray. These are taken to the post office in Denton, Texas for mailing.

About 10 percent of our members are in Canada. Without the help of Ruth and Eldon we would not be able to support this. If we mail the envelope from the US, the postage is high and we have to fill out a customs form for each one. To solve this problem, we send a box of tracts to Ruth and Eldon. They assemble envelopes in a similar way and then mail them within the country.

One final note. A big thanks to Tom and Michele who also help with the tract club. When a new member enrolls on the web site, their address is sent to Tom and Michele. They send out a welcome pack which includes a letter about the club and 15 tracts to get the person started. Since this letter goes out first class, we expect a new member would hear from us within a week of enrolling online.

Many thanks to all those that help with these mailings.

In February I had the privilege of attending the Super Bowl Outreach in Miami, FL. At that outreach, I heard two messages by Matt Johnson preaching on the Excellencies of Christ. If you have never heard those messages, I’ll encourage you to check them out. After returning from the trip, I was challenged by the messages that Matt preached and listened to them several more times. A short time later, he released a BLOG post listing research that he had done for another sermon at his church which presented the Titles and Attributes of Christ. This message was also very impacting. It caused me to spend more time in the Word and contemplating how great Christ is. On more than one occasion, I’ve read the titles and attributes of Christ in the open air!

I had the opportunity to speak more with Matt at the Ambassadors Academy #13 in March in LA. Later he and I discussed the possibility of using some of this material to make a Gospel tract. We worked on the tract together. The who is described by tract features a number of the titles and attributes of Jesus on the front and the Gospel message on the back.

When I heard that the theme of the Texas Revival Series would be preaching the excellencies of Christ, we realized it was a good opportunity to release the tract. About a thousand of these tracts were given out to attendees at the Texas Revival Series on Saturday. They will also appear in the November 2010 mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club.

Trivia tracts are very popular to hand out to people. They are fun to hand out. And the people receiving them love to prove how “smart” they are by answering the questions.

One Million Tracts and Living Waters have several popular designs. We have shipped those tracts in the past.

Last year we made a special tract for witnessing at Oklahoma football games. The tracts were well received. The tract had some trivia questions on it. The last question leads to the Gospel message. We talked about developing other tracts for other teams, but then we never got around to doing it.

This year we decided to take an approach to make a generic football background and then customize the trivia questions to particular teams. We started with an NFL Trivia version of the football trivia tract which tract club members will be receiving in the October mailing of the tract club. The NFL question should be relevant across the country whereas team specific questions are only really applicable in various regions.

We have already made three additional versions of the tract for Oklahoma Sooners, Dallas Cowboys and St Louis Rams. If you are interested in making a version for your team, you can make a request to One Million Tracts to print it for you by filling out the online form.

The True or False tract originated from an idea that I saw in an article discussing the Bible, Book of Mormon and Quran. The article was pointing out statistics that most people believe the three books say basically the same thing. With the idea for a tract to refute Islam and Mormonism all at once, I contacted Tyler McNabb, Director of Apologetics for Jeremiah Cry, to see if he would be interested in helping me with the idea. He was!

The text that Tyler came up with for the back of the tract was a perfect fit to the concept we weer going for. But also with the tie to reality TV, many people will relate to what the tract is saying.

When the tracts arrived I was anxious to hand some of them out.  The first time I took them out with me,  I was at the mall with a friend sharing the Gospel. We had a good discussion with the first guy we talked too. As I was handing him a tract he said, “I’m a Mormon”, so I took that tract back and handed him one of our new True or False tracts. He took it. We had a brief discussion from there about the difference of the Jesus and Heavenly Father in Mormonism than in the Bible. Please pray that he reads the tract and seeks the truth which he heard from us.

A short time later we were at the sunglasses kiosk talking with the guy who was working there. When we asked about spiritual things he said he was a Muslim. He said he did not have time to go into things much more because he was working. So I handed him True or False tract and told him he could contact me through the web site on the back and we could set up a time to talk more. Please pray that he will contact me.

It was really encouraging that the first time we took this tract out, we were able to give one to a Muslim and one to a Mormon. Both said “thank you” when we gave it to them. Since then, I’ve handed out many more of these tracts to Mormons, Muslims and others. Even if the person is not a Mormon or a Muslim, the message is still appropriate because it helps educate them that these three books are not the same.

This tract will make its way to the tract club in November 2010!

Mark Cahill’s book One Heartbeat Away is one of my favorite resources to give to someone who we have witnessed too. The book provides a wonderful blend of apologetics and Biblical references to present a logical case for Christ. I love to give these books to people after we have witnessed to them.

Custom Tract Source has a post card sized tract that offers a free copy of this book. In order to encourage our tract club members to engage in one on one conversations and offer people this book, one month, we provided a few of these tracts from Custom Tract Source in each club member envelope. However, due to the size of the cards, it made the envelope heavier and inflexible. That meant that the cost of pricing was nearly twice what it was without these cards. We had intended to send more of the Custom Tract Source cards, but the shipping issues made it impractical.

Then one night, I was talking to Chris Salter on the phone. He suggested that we inquire about making a business card sized version of this tract. So I emailed Mark Cahill and asked if we could promote his web site on our own tract. He graciously agreed. We had Marv at One Million tracts design the tract, got them printed and put them into the tract club.

I don’t advise just handing out the Where will you spend Eternity card by itself because it does not have a Gospel message on it. However, it makes a great follow-up for a one on one conversation. I like to provide people with free resources. We often give out Bibles, DVDs and other items.  In this case, I like the idea that the person has to actually go to the web site and request the book. By putting some effort into it, it is my prayer that they will take the book seriously and read it when they get it.

The Can you name ten of the most popular Valentines Day gifts tract was created for the tract club in 2010. It leverages the concept of naming ten things and then has a segway to the Ten Commandments.

We kicked around several ideas for a Valentines Day tract including a “be mine” from Jesus, but settled on this tract. If you have ideas for another Valentines Day tract for next year, let me know.