Does anyone else do this w/tracts?

Nice to meet ya, Wang Fu! "Yes, my family does it all the time & has noticed a real drop in their "junk mail"!

They also send tracts when paying bills, including the utility companies. Only one person has told them to stop.

 

Great idea.......must give it a try
yours, Jon

 

LOL> I have kinda felt guilty about doing it, but now I do it with every one that comes to me. Never know who will get it.

 

Have never thought of that, I'll give it a go.

Next time you go to get petrol(Gas) and the attendant asks you if you would like to take advantage of their latest candy offer (3 for a dollar etc) Say no thanks, But then say "Thankyou for thinking of asking me if I would like to avail myself of your specials. Because you have tried to help me please allow me to tell you about my church, I would like to help you"

 

I like that, it's quick and easy, I'm going to give it a try.

 

Is this a "positive" witness?

"Hey, we paid postage to have someone return our deal, but instead they sent us this religious stuff - without the deal! We paid for this?"

Seems a bit unethical.

I'm all for using tracts, but we need to do so wisely. It's just like at restaurants. Someone leaves a tract rather than a tip because "it's more valuable than money." Well, tracts don't pay bills. If you leave a tract at a restaurant, leave a generous tip as well.

I think the idea of putting tracts in with your check to pay your bills is a GOOD IDEA! Just make sure the check doesn't bounce, that your not behind, and that it isn't late!

Rev. G

 

Warm Christian greetings!

It is not unethical to send tracts back in junk mail envelopes. Think about it - the sender of the junk mail has sent you unsolicited mail, you are simply replying; it seems like fair game to me.

However, I take the point about making sure that if we send tracts with bill payments they are not late!

Kind regards

Robert J Hutton

 

The problem with that is that when you send tracts in with your bill payments, they jam up the machines that open the envelopes and get the poor workers in trouble because the down time caused by the tract in the machine makes it that much more difficult to meet their quota.

That's not a very good "witness" to get somebody in trouble with their boss.

I used to be a supervisor in the remittance department of a large bank where this happened a lot.

The people who opened the mail spent more time cursing the people who sent the tracts than they did readong them.

 

Friend, WHY have those people sent you the reply envelope? To respond to their offer. To send back a tract, without responding to the offer, is making them pay for postage for something they did not intend. If, however, you respond to the offer AND send the tract - that's a great idea! You aren't "bothering" me, Wang Fu, I'm just trying to help you and others to look at the issue a bit more carefully.

In one sense we haven't asked for the junk mail, but in another we have - when we signed up for a subscription, gave our phone number at a store, signed up to win a prize somewhere, etc., etc.

Let's assume that it is "fair game" to send a tract (without a response to the offer) in the envelope. What is the response of Joe Pagan? Does this action harden him against the Gospel?

"I'm trying to make a living, and this Christian is making my company lose money by having us pay the postage for this little booklet. If they really cared about me, they'd help feed my company rather than taking money away from us."

Now, I'm not saying that the tract would do no good - I strongly believe that God uses His Word and it will not return to Him void. However, we must also remember that the Lord has told us to be as "wise as serpents" and as "harmless as doves" as we interact with those in the world. Let the Gospel be the offense without us being offensive.

Let me put it another way - get in the "head" of the "pagan" and learn how to approach him. Love him. Help him. Do what is good for him.

Rev. G

 

Warm Christian greetings!

A brother has made the point that as far as a pagan is concerned we should do what is good for him. What is good for him is to be warned of the danger he is in, and the remedy for getting out of that danger, surely that is the best act of kindness we can do for someone. (Ezekiel 33)

Incidentally, I heard of a person who worked in a sorting office in Edinburgh, Scotland, who was converted through just this kind of evangelism. He had never come across the Gospel before those tracts started coming.

If people have genuine scruples about not doing this then that is between them and the Lord and I have every respect for them; but I believe it is a worthwhile form of evangelism and intend to continue it.

Kind regards

Robert J Hutton

 

Yes, what better way to spread the Gospel than by causing their machines to jam and getting them in trouble with the boss?

 

Warm Christian greetings!

I could reply to Mr "Smoke Eater's" rather provocative comment but I do not wish to come down to that level. I will not allow myself to be provoked.

Kind regards

Robert J Hutton.

 

I'm not trying to provoke you and I don't know what you mean by "come down to that level".

It's a perfectly legitimate question.

I was the supervisor in a "lockbox" that handled credit card payments for many different clients and I can tell you that that's exactly what happens when you send a tract in with your bill payments.

The most widely used high speed mail extraction machine is the OPEX 150.

It's calibrated to only an envelope of a certain thickness.

When you send a tract in with your payment, the machine jams because it's not calibrated to adjust for the additional thickness caused by the tract.

When enough inconsiderate people send in tracts, it can throw the calibration, itself, off which requires a service call from an OPEX technician, since operators are not trained to do this.

So now, not only have you taken that machine out of action for the time it takes for the tech to come (resetting the thickness parameters, themselves, only takes about five minutes, but most places don't have a tech on site, so they have to wait for him to finish whatever job he's doing at the moment and travel to their office), you've also cost the conmpany a couple of hundred bucks for the call.

Most of your operators are judged by a quota (ours was 8,000 - 12,000 pieces per hour, depending on the client we were prcessing).

When you jam up the machine, you cause the production numbers to go down, causing the operator to not his quota or, at least, making his job much more difficult.

When the tract is caught in the machine, it's chewed up and unreadable, anyway! So all this inconvenience you've caused was for nothing.

I know all of because I was an operator and, when I became a supervisor, I was the one who had to do the performance reviews.

Take it from someone who's been there, all sending tracts in with your mail does is make them mad and the tracts just get thrown away.