Good
Person Booth's at Fair's & Fest's can be VERY rewarding. We have found
that this type of booth offers lots of opportunities to have conversations
of the gospel with people. Most people do not find the booths to be
offensive and many people are eager to find out if they are truly a
"good person." If this page doesn't help answer some of the
questions you may have please feel free to send us a email and we will try
and answer the question to the best of our ability...contact
us here.
Canopies are great with sides. Need
sides for rain and also so you can close-up shop if you are working
a multi-day event. Many fairs and fests require you to have a
fire-extinguisher even if you are not selling food/drink. Also see if
you are required to have insurance? Some locations will require these
things even if you are giving away drinks or water. Figure on spending
around $300 on a canopy like this one.
2)PurchaseGood Person Banner from Living Waters Ministries.
This is a great banner to start a
conversation. It also helps complete your booth. It is a very durable
quality banner of high color, and it will cost you around $140. +
shipping.
3)
Workers must go through a proper Biblical Evangelism Course.
The Most important thing is making
sure the people working your booth have gone through a Biblical Evangelism
course such as....the Way
of the Master basic evangelism course, Ambassadors
Alliance , School
of Biblical Evangelism,Mark
Cahill's Ministries, Andy
Lapin's Transfired Ministries, Paul
Washer, John
MacArthur's Grace to You, Lost
Cause Ministries, or through Worldview
Weekend. We have had others Not from our ministry try and help us
out and we found out that they were presenting a different gospel message to
people. Some tried to use the decisional prayer approach. Some were there
just to promote their church (we never use evangelism as a marketing
tool). Some when questioned about the gospel couldn't even tell us how
they got saved (so we even questioned their salvation). That is also
why to work in one of Good Messengers booths you must be a member of our
ministry, and to be a member you must have had taken an approved
evangelism course. Good Messengers Ministries of Northwest Indiana works
with various denominations that typically have different doctrines, but
those in our ministry do agree on the same Biblical gospel message. Ultimately
ask yourself...what are you at this event for? Who do you represent?
The gospel MUST be Biblical and MUST be the most important thing on your
agenda. Protect and Present the Biblical gospel message at ALL costs!!! Click
here to see what courses Good Messengers Ministries of Northwest
Indiana has to offer.
4) Use
a Good Person Test Survey Form.
Even though all of our people who
are working the booth know how to go through the gospel using the law and
don't need to use a survey form...it does give legitimacy to the person
you are talking to. When you are done you can also give the person the
survey. We typically have around 500 of these printed for a 2-4 day event,
and sometimes we go through all of them.
Have the people who are working
your booth go through the surveys with people. Don't just have people
fill out the survey. The purpose of the survey is to have conversations
with people. Ultimately, you are trying to talk to them about the things
of God not to go through some kind of presentation. Our ministry NEVER
uses the Good Person Test Booth to market ANY church or organization. We
are there to share Christ and His good news of salvation. People will
often ask us what church we are from and our response is, "We are
just a bunch of Christians from various churches who get together to
share Christ, and we are not representing any church." Most people
are shocked!!! So often churches use events like these to market their
church and evangelism should NEVER be used as marketing. We don't
even point them to our website unless they are a Christian who
is looking to get involved in evangelism. Also we never take donations
in our booth (even if they try and throw the money at you)! Show
people that you are there to give and share Christ with no strings
attached!
5)Consider
creating a Gospel Message Website or use ours.
We have a website that we point
people to www.GotOurTract.com
that many other organizations use. You are free to point people
to this site as well. We put a website together that has a
long gospel message and a section to answer questions (from the
Evidence Bible and other resources). At the end of this site, approx.
pg 13 the person can apply and get a 100% Free copy of Mark
Cahill's book "One Heartbeat
Away" sent to them. Good Messengers Ministries wanted to have
a site that promotes the gospel and not some organization. The purpose
of this site is to provide people with more information than what we
have room for on most of our tracts and booklets. This site is also
available in 11 different languages!!! This website is what we
print on all of our tracts and booklets. We have even created a
"What If?" tract (our #1 tract to hand out other than the
money tracts) that matches the website... you can view this on our
resources page...http://www.goodmessengers.org/resources.htm
6)
Select a Good Location.
You may want to check out several
locations (fairs, flea-markets, fests, etc.) before committing,
especially if it is summer time and there are several locations to
choose from. Where is the best traffic? What is the cost and
requirements for the booth space? How many days and hours is the
event? How many workers are going to be needed to operate the booth?
Will the event coordinator allow you to select the booth location for
your tent? Make sure you aren't being placed in a grouping. For
instance, one fair that we had a booth set-up they placed all the
Christian churches together in a row, side-by-side. Many fair-goers
would just by-pass our whole area. The location of your Good Person
Booth is very important to having great conversations.
7) Booth Workers are VERY important.
Don't have to many people
working the booth. Use a sign-up
sheet to get people to commit to working a certain time slot. We
have anywhere from 4-8 depending on the crowd. If you have too many people
try to take turns working the outside of the booth as well as the inside. We
typically put two-three people in front of the booth handing out tracts
and getting people to take the survey. Depending on your location you may
or may not be able to go into the walk-way in front of your booth to try
and talk to people. The canopy booth helps because once they are willing
to take the survey you can take them into your booth to have a
conversation.
Dress. Have your people dress
casual (jeans, t-shirts [no religious shirts], etc.) I would not recommend
allowing people to wear Christian clothing (ie. Jesus saves shirts, etc.)
You are trying to remove as much offense (not in the gospel, but in your
presentation of the booth) to try and have conversations about the gospel.
The gospel can be offensive enough without our Christian marketing of
shirts, signs etc. Again, ultimately what are you trying to do...present
Christ to a lost and dying world! You need to try and start-up as many conversations as you can. We try and remove as much offense as possible to
have conversations without compromising the Biblical message. That is why
the "Good Person Test Booth" works REALLY well. It has no
mention of Jesus, Bible, etc... and people will tend to stop at your booth
to find out what this "good person test" is truly about. That is
also why our booth members carry pocket Bibles (for reference only if
needed). We don't go around waving BIG Bibles, or carryng them
around because it scares people away. Why? Think about it this way:
Before you were a believer, what did you think when you saw a guy standing
on a structure and waving a Bible around? Were your first thoughts, “Gee…
I wonder what that guy is saying? I think I’ll go over there and
listen.” Of course not. We aren't offended to carry them but in the
same aspect we want to remove the offense to have as many conversations
about Christ and the cross that we can. Let them hear your Bible words;
let them hear your message; let them hear the tears in your voice as you
proclaim the Law and Gospel. Why turn off a potential listener to your
message before they even hear it by waving around a Bible?
8)
Have Good Biblical Resources to Give Away on the Table.
We like to have two
6' tables with vinyl table cloths on them (easy to wipe-off). One
table has handout Bibles and booklets. The other table has tract materials
and extra clip boards with the Good Person Test Surveys. We put signs on
the tables...saying, "ALL items on the tables are FREE.
Please, DO NOT take multiples of each item"
You will find that kids especially like to take handfuls of your tracts
and books, and at the cost of the materials we try to limit people and
watch what they take. Good Messengers Ministries has a member who owns a
Christian Bookstore his name is Mel Huitsing He provides materials
at great discount. I would recommend talking to him about purchasing some
resources for your booth. His cell phone number is (219) 228-0656 (www.seedsower.net).
Below you will see some of the
resources that we ALWAYS have on our tables...
d.One
Heartbeat Away book. We purchase this book by the case and keep them
in a tub under the table. This is a fantastic book to give to someone
who is seeking. We don't leave this book out because of the cost (Mel
will give you a GREAT deal on these), and we only give it out to serious
conversations.
e.
We also get many, many booklets from RBC
ministries...with topics on marriage, addictions, divorce, death.
Parking
Ticket...
make sure if you put these on cars that it is ok to do so (we got in
trouble for putting this tract on cars in the parking lot at a fair) and
make sure you put them on the passenger side. Get permission to do this
at fairs and fests first, but this is also a great tract to hand
to police.
g.
We also have countless tracts that we print ourselves or purchase
through one of these three vendors. Living waters is not the only place
that provides great tracts..
On the top of the inside of our
canopy you will often see stuffed animals (purchase from your local
dollar store), and toy items that we staple kids tracts to and give
away to children. Often giving toys away to
children are done in teams... while someone is giving a
child a toy someone else is talking to the parents. We also do the
same approach with the "curved
illusion" tract...
...we use this tract to draw
children and while someone is using the tract on the children someone
is talking to the parents. It is a way to give back and a way to share
Christ with a family with smaller children who would most likely not
visit your booth. Typically we only do the stuffed animal give-away at
an event such as a fair or fest that has carnival games. Be
thinking of the event you are at before using certain items.
9)It
is very important to keep your tables neat and clean.
No personal belongings
on the tables (put workers personal belongings [purses etc] in tubs
under the tables), no left over drink bottles, food etc.
Consider keeping your tracts and booklets rubber banded and leave
them that way on the table (in case of wind and it is also easy to
pack-up again). People tend not to take items from a table that is
all messed-up and covered with personal belongings.
10)Look for
creative ways to share Christ.
Start
to think outside of "the box" and how can you create ways to
get into conversations
with people
about the Lord. It is about having conversations not doing gospel
presentation. We tend to look for opportunities to give
back to the community and also to share Christ. Ultimately we want to
talk to people about the most important thing...the saving grace of
Jesus Christ.
For example, in the past we
received a donation of 36 cases of Gatoraid to give away in one of our
Good Person Test Booths. The event was at a 4th of July Fest during the
hot summer heat. We offered FREE Gatoraid to anyone who took the
"Good Person Test." Some people took the test just to get a
FREE cold drink. Make sure you have lots of ice. We have a 100
gallon cooler (cooler costs about $78 from Walmart) which uses Qty.
4 22lb bags of ice each day (about $15 of ice a day). Some people who
took the test for the Gatoraid forgot to even take the Gatoraid. They
were so blown away by the test they were more concerned now with the
state of their soul than getting a cold drink. Of course, we would offer
them the Gatoraid anyway. Its not about what you can offer, the drinks,
the tracts, the books...its about what Christ has to offer. Keep that in
the front of what you do and you will do fine!
