Most of us are familiar with Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) knocking on our doors, hoping to share their version of the Christian gospel with us. If you are anything like me, you find such intrusions into your privacy to be irritating. These God-bothers mean well — thoroughly convinced that they are right. “Hell is real, death is certain,” their thinking goes. I knocked on countless doors in nondescript rural communities as an IFB pastor. I hated the practice, but I was taught by my pastors and college professors that it was essential for me to knock on every door where I pastored. And so I did, for years, taking a handful of loyal church members with me. Spring, summer, winter, and fall, we knocked on doors, hoping to share the gospel with sinners. I taught classes on soulwinning, teaching congregants the most effective way to knock on doors and evangelize people. I even had “specialists” come in to teach church members tricks they could use to reach people with the gospel. Year after year, we knocked on doors, without success. Oh, people would listen to us, and even get “saved,” but few of these converts ever walked through the doors of the church, and those who did rarely stayed.
Fortunately, I eventually outgrew Baptist Fundamentalism and its evangelism practices. In the late 1980s, I became a Calvinist. This change in theology delivered me from the need to bother people with my version of the Christian gospel. “God is sovereign, and he alone saves,” I believed. While I still preached on the street (please see My Life as a Street Preacher — Part One, My Life as a Street Preacher — Part Two, My Life as a Street Preacher — Part Three, and Bruce, the Street Preacher), my focus was on the message instead of evangelism techniques. While there were still people “saved” as a result of my preaching, my focus had changed. I saw that it was my duty to preach the Word and let God do the “saving.”
Did you knock on doors as an Evangelical Christian? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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