Door to Door Evangelism in Pittsburgh

Some friends and I decided to go door to door in a local neighborhood over break. I had been door to door once before on a mission trip to Pharr, Texas but I was expecting that doing it around Pittsburgh, my hometown, would be much different. However, I was surprised to see that there were actually many similarities. We had many doors that were never even opened, either because they weren’t home or people were avoiding the scary evangelists at their door. When people did open the door, we told them what church we were representing and asked if we could talk to them, maybe ask them some questions. This brought forth a whole plethora of marvelous on the spot excuses. It seemed like half of the neighborhood was “on their way out the door” and it was odd that we only actually saw one or two cars leave from the houses we visited. Another lady told us that the dog would get in the way and then once we started leaving she put the dog on the leash outside and left him there. Seems contradictory, right? But one of my favorite excuses was, “No, that’s okay we’re Catholic. We’re good!” I’m sure they thought that was an excellent excuse.

            When we further questioned these Catholics by asking, “When you die? Do you know where you’re going to go?” This question made them more uncomfortable. One common theme we saw from the majority of the people we talked to was that is seemed none of them really knew for sure. We might get a response like, “Well… I mean I hope I’m going to Heaven.” Or there was the ever popular, “I’m a good person I do a lot of good things, so yeah… yeah, I think I’m going to Heaven.” When people expressed this uncertainty about their “final destination” we asked them, “Well would you like to know for sure?” After that we might dig deeper into the gospel story but we didn’t get into much detail with a majority of the people. A very common response was, “Well I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.” Those were the people that we eventually had to leave. My guess is that they were so scared of where eternity would take them and so uncertain of where they would go that they convinced themselves that nobody really knew for sure so it was okay if they didn’t know either. That was probably the biggest need that I saw in the people, the need to know for sure where they are going. It seems like there are so many non-Christian Catholics out there that don’t truly understand the gospel. I can’t imagine going to church every Sunday just hoping that it would be enough to get me to Heaven. The biggest need for the average non-Christian is to have the gospel clearly explained in a way that they may know for sure where they are going to go.

            While there were many excuses, the day wasn’t without its high points. At two of the houses we went to we came across very kind and encouraging Christian women who gave us enthusiasm to keep going. And at the very last house we went to, we talked to a couple who hadn’t been going to church but did believe in God. When we asked them if they would like assurance for eternity they said they would like to know for sure. I was able to explain the gospel to them in full detail. They made the decision to ask Jesus to clean the sin from their hearts so that they could go to Heaven. It seemed like they just saw it as the logical thing to do. We left them with some tracts and some basic instruction on how to further their relationship with God. We also got their name and encouraged them to get plugged into a church. It was a very uplifting and exciting end to the day.