In 2003, a generous North American donor made a wonderful offer to the world church—he would pay for the printing of one billion cards offering Bible studies and supply them without charge to the church. The church would only have to come up with the money to mail them or a plan to distribute them by hand. Thus Sow 1 Billion was born.
The Wisconsin Conference requested 700,000 of these one billion cards for distribution in our state. Pastors met with church boards and together they decided how many invitations to Bible study they could handle. When the discussions were finished, English churches in Wisconsin had committed to mailing 583,000 brochures with church members personally distributing another 90,000. Our Hispanic churches had accepted the challenge of distributing another 65,000 invitations in the Spanish language.
"The postage to mail these brochures was over $56,000," reported Kitty Crary, secretary to the president. "It was an awesome logistical task to get everyone’s order prepared and mailed to the exact zip codes the churches specified."
"The goal of this mailing is to generate 5,000 Bible studies in Wisconsin," stated Don Corkum, Wisconsin Conference president and personal ministries director. "People can respond by mailing the card back, they can call a toll-free number, or they can sign up using the Internet. But it is the personal followup by church members that will determine the success or failure of Sow 1 Billion," reported Corkum.
This outreach will dramatically impact our fall evangelism. Successful evangelistic campaigns throughout the world have one common factor—the great amount of effective preparatory work done in giving Bible studies and visiting interested people. There is nothing more thrilling than conducting an evangelistic series where many Bible studies have been given by the church members preparing the way.
On Tuesday morning, February 24, we received our first two responses. On Wednesday, there were 80 written cards. On Thursday, there were 138 cards and 177 telephone requests. On Mar. 1 and 2, 419 cards came in and we received 16 telephone requests! It is a major challenge to the conference office secretaries to record these interests and send them on to pastors and lay Bible instructors who will visit them and provide the lessons. What a great problem to have!
"God is prepared to do miracles for us as we do His work. We need more workers in our churches who can give Bible studies," said Corkum. "We have the training materials and our pastors are delighted to instruct and support lay Bible instructors in this work. We simply need more people willing to learn how to do this great work."
Maybe God is speaking to your heart. Could you help by dropping off a few Bible lessons each week? Pray for God’s continued blessing on men and women who are looking heavenward for spiritual light. Pray for more Spirit-filled harvesters to enter the work. For in Wisconsin, the harvest is indeed ripe!
James Fox is the Wisconsin Conference communication director and evangelism coordinator.
