Evangelization is as old as the hills … well, at least as old as the Acts of the Apostles! In the Fall of 2014 Corpus Christi began an initiative of visiting the homes in the area around our church building. We were inspired by a member who had experience doing this at a parish in Highland Park, MI. The process is often described as “door-to-door” since a pair of visitors travels down a given street stopping at each home.
Our process is to have a group of visitors pray as a group at church before going out in the evening to visit homes. We then divide into teams of two and decide on which streets we will travel that evening. Our typical garb is a red T-shirt with the Corpus Christi logo. We wear name tags also with the logo on them. When we approach a home we look for things that might give some hints as to the people living there … like a kid’s bike, beautiful plants (and gardening tools), etc. When people answer the door bell we introduce ourselves and tell where our church is located. We offer them a tri-fold document with information about our worship and other parish activities in the neighborhood. We ask them if they have anything we should pray about for them. If they have some prayer intention we invite them to come out on the porch, hold our hands, and pray together. Amazing! People we just met and we are holding hands and praying together! We ask them for their names so we can keep in contact with them.
Our primary follow-up is to send out postcards with information about the times of our worship for the Christmas season, for Lent and for Holy Week… and our August parish picnic. If something in the discussions on the front porch deserves a follow-up visit or some service we can provide them, we take the appropriate action.
Going through the neighborhood to spread the Good News.