The story of the 21 Day Challenge

Gospel tracts are fun and easy to hand out. You can leave them in a six pack of beer, mail them in a business reply envelope or hand them to a cashier when paying for your groceries.  They are also great conversation starters. The tracts are designed to peak curiosity in the physical realm and allow a conversation to be swung to the spiritual realm. By joining the Everyday Club (a Facebook group) you can join more than 100 others who share how they do this everyday. For more information see www.bezeugen.org/everyday/

A friend and I meet at a local shopping mall for lunch a couple of times a month. We eat lunch and then walk around the mall stirking up conversations with people. Sometimes we might lead with a Gospel tract and other times we might lead with a conversation. For instance if the kiosk is selling cell phone plans I might ask “do any of your plans allow me to call God?” Or if the kiosk is selling some cosmetics I might ask, “will using this product help me get into Heaven?: Notice in both examples, I started with what they are selling and swung the spiritual things just by mentioning God and Heaven. We will take note to how they respond to mentioning this and then proceed to talk about the Gospel if we are able.

Recently as we have talked to people we have been handing out Bibles, New Testaments, and Gospels of John and encouraging them to read the Gospel of John. A chapter a day takes just 21 days to read through the Gospel of John. If we give them a New Testament or a complete Bible we will put a bookmark from the mailing in the Gospel of John so that they can easily find it.

About six months ago I was having lunch with the man who had called the police on us a couple of times while we were reading the Bible in the open air in a park. You see, where the BLOG says “wait that’s not all” and the explains a little more, well actually the BLOG is not all either. If you’d like to catch up you can read some background here.

Anyway, the man and I have been in touch for seven and a half years. Over the years we have exchanged emails, connected on LinkedIn and had lunch a few times. Back in April he emailed suggesting we have lunch. At lunch we talked and caught up on work and family. Then I told him about going to the mall, talking to people and challenging them to read the Gospel of John a chapter a day. When I mentioned that he said, “I’ll take that challenge”.  Long story short, he listened to the Gospel of John two times through on audio. God used that to build a bridge for Him from the darkness of sin to the light of God’s salvation. He is now attending a weekly Bible study with me at a local church!

You can ask people if they are making resolutions. Then you can remind them that most people give up on their resolutions by February. So why not a 21 day challenge to read the Gospel of John a chapter a day for 21 days?

A simple way to get copies of the Gospel of John to hand out is to enroll with the Pocket Testament League. Go to https://www.ptl.org/code/signup.php and enter referral code 231081.

You can view the Twenty-One Day Challenge tract here.