14 thoughts on “fwotw: Soul Winning Marathon”

  2. This direct quote comes from the instructions. “The success of this day will depend on how well you prepare and plan to have a good marathon.” Evidently, we are in a completely new age of the church. The Holy Spirit is no longer needed for the saving of souls. It all depends on how well you prepare and if you speech is convincing enough. You can win whole football teams to Jesus! Just get them all together and exert enough group peer pressure, once one caves the rest will follow. I’d start with the QB, he’s the natural leader of the team. There is so much more to say, but I think I threw up a little bit.

  3. 7687 by bus ministry! Hurrah! (see video)
    “$12.50 for a visitor!” Seriously??? This is one thing that really bugs me. Visitor contests (been wanting to make it a suggestion Darrell! 🙂 ) Why do people make contests concerning who brings the most people/wins the most souls! Especially on the brining part. Ever wonder how crappy you may make one feel by winning a prize because you BROUGHT them? Can’t stand that aspect.

  5. This vindicates my not nominating the previous post for the number one position on the Stupid Scale. (I knew you could come through for me, Darrell.)

  7. This stirs up so many bad memories. I grew up in Jack Hyles-type churches. As a teen, I attended a large church in the Dallas area. On Saturday afternoons, we would go out to “canvass” the neighborhoods. (Imagine the safety of letting pairs of teenage girls walk around seedy areas by themselves.) We would knock on doors and say the proscribed, “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?” If the shocked individual said, “Uh…I don’t know…” we would immediately offer, “Well, if you’d like to go to heaven, pray this prayer after me…” etc. This whole process took about 2 minutes, then we could joyfully add a tally mark to our index card which we had to turn in when we reassembled at the church later in the afternoon. To this day, I feel so guilty for having participated in this fraud, although at the time I thought I was being “spiritual.”

  8. It is stuff like this that got us all at one time or another, Jan, like visitations to visitor’s houses. So ironic, really. We’d bother the living daylights out of people by knocking on their doors at odd hours of the evening just to show them that we want them in church! It’s really a sad existence. I’m glad I’m not in it.

  9. I agree that SOME try to rush people through a prayer just to get another ‘notch in their belt’ but when I went soulwinning I made sure that I didn’t rush a person through a prayer and that they understood what I was doing. Having said that, I don’t like the idea of having a goal number which might cause people to take short cuts.

  10. Eric,
    Well said. I lose patience with the “numbers matter” argument. Also, if their efforts have been so good, why is the greater Chicago area still killing and is much more dangerous then ever before? Sounds like great results.

  11. Matthew 23:15
    Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

  12. The irony is the soul winning marathon was the day before the Chicago Marathon.

    Thank god I live in a gated building…last thing I would have wanted on my day of rest before the 26.2 miles would be to have a fundie kid knocking at my door.

  14. I used to make the analogy between soulwinning and an Old West gunfighter carving notches on the butt of his pistol (or an WWI air ace marking kills on his fuselage). Especially when people bragged about their numbers (something which the Jesus I’ve come to know wouldn’t countenance–even one soul saved is a positive outcome). Particularly when the guys would brag about it to the ladies (I’ll leave it to the audience to fill in the Freudian implications there). This…just takes the cake over all of that.

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