Money talks, and in Sin City, it proclaims the Gospel to thousands of people each week, thanks to the efforts of 13 friends from Washington state who started a network of three “simple churches.”
Armed with oversized $100 bills that offer a thorough Gospel presentation on the back, the Expectation Church Network hands out the tracts to passers-by on the Las Vegas strip, sometimes engaging in conversation and prayer, but focusing mostly on simply distributing the Good News.
In 2008, they gave out 50,000 tracts. By mid-April 2009, they had distributed another 80,000.
“Our job in this scenario is to put the Gospel in as many people’s hands as we can and let God take it from there,” says Scott Linklater, Expectation’s pastor.
The Foursquare denomination planted the simple churches—small Christ-centered, Bible-believing gatherings in homes or other locations—in Las Vegas last year.
In addition to the Gospel, the tracts direct readers to JesusinVegas.com, a website that includes a video series Expectation produced about walking with God and searchable databases to help tourists find churches near where they live.
Doug Linderman, lead pastor at Oasis Christian Church in Las Vegas, was skeptical about tract-based witnessing to tourists on the strip because there is virtually no opportunity to follow up with them. But after meeting with Linklater, hearing about the website and actually helping pass out the tracts, he changed his thinking. His church plans to help hand out the tracts once a month.
“As far as that type of outreach on the strip to the tourist community, it’s the most positive and potentially effective thing that I’ve ever seen here,” Linderman says.
FROM THE BEST OF OUTREACH: This article appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Outreach magazine.
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