Survey says tracts help in friendship evangelism efforts

USA-Barna finds that pastors favor friendship and lifestyle evangelism and the use of tracts.
86% of Senior Protestant pastors consider relational or friendship evangelism as a very effective way to bring others to Christ. A study was commissionedy by the American Tract Society and done by Barna. The survey was done last year and was released this months as ATS marks its 179-year anniversary as a gospel publisher.
The study found that 2/3 of the churches represented in the study used printed gospel tract pamphlets for evangelism and that 65% of the pastors considered tracts a good way of making evangelism doable for the people in their respective churches. According to the Barna study, African-American pastors and Southern Baptist pastors expressed the most support for tract evangelism.
Dan Southern, President of the American Tract Society, noted that the survey indicated a need to help churches understand the different ways tracts could be used for evangelism. They do know that friendship evangelism, door-to-door evangelism and special event evangelism all provide opportunity for tract evangelism.
Tract appearance and format, and how current and relevant the tract topic and text were cited by the Barna study as important factors to pastors. ATS have dveloped relevant tracts on such topics as a follow-up to 911 and ones that relate to “The Passion of the Christ” movie.