Rev. Matt Pfeifer (Des Moines, IA)

Our evangelism lay leader is always looking for ways to get more people involved in evangelism. He found Praise and Proclaim and suggested that we use it. From the beginning, Dave Malnes was helpful in answering our questions and helping us to see the goal of this program for our congregation. Of course, our goal is to tell more people the good news about Jesus. But we also wanted to train more members to help with this work, not only going door to door, but especially to make them comfortable talking to the people they already know about Christ. Dave was especially helpful in helping us to organize the weekend outreach initiative. With his help, we had a good group come for the Friday training. The presentation engaged us and motivated us with the gospel to go out the next day to plant gospel seeds with people in our neighborhood. About half of the group came on Saturday to go door to door. Some who came on Friday had made other plans on Saturday because they were sure they would not want to go door to door. After the training, they wished they had kept Saturday open. Saturday went well too. Everyone got more comfortable sharing a short gospel message and were excited to tell their stories at the evening celebration meal. A great outcome of this weekend is that members are asking when we are going to do this again. They want more opportunities to proclaim the gospel. Thanks to the Lord and to Praise and Proclaim, we have more members who are willing to help in organized outreach events and engage in personal evangelism too. I highly recommend Praise and Proclaim to any church that wants to involve more people in evangelism.

(Rev. Matt Pfeifer, Lincoln Heights Lutheran Church, Des Moines, IA)