I’m sure there are fundies out there who will pay money for this:
“You could change someone’s life… at a traffic light!”
Category Archives: Outreach
Door-to-Door Visitation
Not wanting to be outdone by the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, fundamentalists have long been fans of door-to-door outreach programs. Thursday evenings or Saturday mornings will find any number of fundamentalists about town giving a gospel soft-sell pitch.
“Hi, my name is Rufus! We’re here from Lighthouse Completely and Totally Separated Baptist Temple and we were just wondering if you go to church anywhere.”
These are not randomly chosen words. The training for door-to-door outreach is very specific about the words used to draw the net around a potential convert. The spiel is tried and proven; the clothes are picked with care; even the number of times to knock on the door is carefully planned. If it’s good enough for encyclopedia salesmen, it’s good enough for the fundies.
It doesn’t matter whether or not door-to-door is culturally acceptable any more or even if anybody bothers to listen — just get out there every week and knock on those doors. 13 million Mormons can’t be wrong.
Bus Ministries
Bus ministries are an outreach method that involves people who live next to the Mount Zion Fundamentalist Baptist church being ferried across town to go to the Fundamentalist Baptist Church of Mount Zion. It all comes out even, though. The FBCMZ is most likely picking up kids from the MZFB neighborhood as well.
The job of a bus captain and his cohorts is not an easy one. There are countless hours of canvasing neighborhoods to root out likely riders. Then the bus crew are up and out at the crack of dawn stopping at houses and collecting all of the kids and trying to keep them safe, quiet, and occupied on the trip. After church is over, all of the bus kids must be returned home again. Week after week. Month after month. And woe be unto him who turns back from the plough — it’s almost impossible to leave a ministry once you’ve started in it.
With all the rigors of the bus ministry at least there aren’t further annoyances for the workers like needing to go through background checks…
Numbers
Year End Salvation Report for the First Separated Blood, Book, And Blessed Hope Fundamental Baptist Church
- Number saved in revivals: 20
- Number saved in door-to-door: 43
- Number saved the day we gave out all those hot dogs and had the clowns: 400
- Number saved again just to make sure: 5
Total Saved: 468.
- Number Baptized: 13
- Number Joined the Church: 3
- Number attending regularly: 2*
*Since Sister Alice is pregnant we count her twice
Chick Tracts
Jack Chick is a mysterious, reclusive artist who has dominated the “scare you silly” genre of gospel tracts. These tracts have been popular because, theoretically, people tend to read them for the illustrated stories and then end up saved as a result.
In reality, the main purpose of these tracts is to keep fundy children lying awake at night on the lookout for demons that might be sneaking into their room to make make them gay or (worse yet) tempt them to play Dungeons & Dragons games.
There are many life lessons to be learned from Chick Tracts. Hurricane Katrina was caused by America not supporting Israel. Stories about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause make kids not believe in Jesus. Halloween candy contains deadly razor blades and poison placed by witches to want to make kids into human sacrifices.
How could the scores of check-out clerks, gas station attendants, and waitresses who receive these little gems possibly avoid being saved after reading such tales?