They represent a new generation of volunteers. I am doing this for Jesus, because He has given me good health."Īlthough many in West's group are retirees from the South and West, Trevis Bonnett, 23, came with 11 young adults and teenagers from the Long Island Church of Christ in New York. "I do this because I love the Lord and I am on my way to heaven," said Mary Foster, 82, a We Care volunteer from Burleson, Tex., who has been on more than 30 campaigns in the last four years. "I would rather push the Lord's products than Amway products." "People act as if they don't need the Lord," said James Bruce, 73, a retiree from Aledo, Tex., who used to sell for Amway. They then held a service and shared "good news" reports about the number of people they had attracted and the number who had been baptized. "There are a lot of people in the Laurel vicinity without Christ, approximately 39,000 homes in the area, so we found out there was a great need and we contacted We Care."Įvery day this week, as they prepared to knock on doors, West and his fellow crusaders ate breakfast from 7 to 8 a.m. "There is a great need for local evangelism," said Charles Thomas, one of the elders at the Laurel Church of Christ. Leaders of the Laurel Church of Christ, who house some of the evangelists, raised $15,000 to cover the expenses of West and his spiritual caravan during their stay. Earlier this week, eight people had been baptized. When someone agrees to be baptized, they are escorted to the Laurel Church of Christ for the ceremony. The group in Laurel this week included black, white and Hispanic evangelists from as far away as Jamaica and Africa.īecause West and other members of the Church of Christ believe that baptism is essential for salvation, one of their main goals is getting people baptized. Churches of Christ congregations are autonomous and members believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. The Churches of Christ is a group of 15,000 nondenominational Christian congregations that have more than 1.5 million members. West, 58, a member of White's Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., is the director and founder of We Care, which has been traveling around the country for the past 30 years as part of the Churches of Christ annual campaign. We Care's proselytizers - divided into four teams - began their annual effort in March in Mexico and will wind up in November in Arkansas. They are participating in a 12-day campaign by West's We Care Ministries to gather followers in the Washington area. "This is hard territory! Being in a metropolitan area, people are wondering if we are real or if they can trust us," said Larry West, an evangelist with the Churches of Christ, as he and more than 100 other crusaders descended on Laurel this week. Knocking on doors has become increasingly rare for evangelists. Other churches get their messages out via television, radio and the Internet. This was not fertile ground for door-to-door evangelism, but Prine and his wife, Angela, and fellow evangelist Scott Houlihan, 14, kept trying as they made their way through the Laurel Lakes community Tuesday morning. Just before she shut her door, Prine gave her a flier and said, "Have a nice day." At that, Prine asked, "Do you know anyone who needs some groceries or any other assistance?" The woman said no. She also mentioned that she was already a Christian.
Then, as her small daughter came to the door with a toy stethoscope, the mother looked down and responded, "I have to get ready to go to work." "What if the Lord were to come right now? Would you know for sure, nothing doubting, that you would go to heaven?" the 50-year-old postal worker from Turlock, Calif., asked one woman who opened her door. Steven Prine and other members of "the cadre," as they call themselves, kept on knocking in hopes of finding at least one soul they could save for Jesus. It didn't matter that the sun was blazing hot and that most people in the Laurel townhouse complex weren't answering their doors.