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“How Can We Pray for You?”

Hosting a Prayer Booth at a Community Festival

by Kinney Cathcart

My husband, Rob, and I have been in various forms of evangelism ministry for the past twenty years. We came to Christ as adults and, therefore, have what we hope is sensitivity toward unsaved folks. We have always prayed to see things through a seeker’s eyes. The idea for a prayer booth at our community’s annual festival came to us last year, but we didn’t get it off the ground until May 2001. I’m glad we waited. The changes from the original vision were good ones.

This was the vision: Chagrin Falls, Ohio, has had an annual Blossom Time Festival in the center of town every Memorial Day weekend for about fifty years. We have an outreach committee at Fellowship Bible Church which focuses on “seeker-friendly” events, such as a nice lunch at our Trout Club with speakers and fly fishing afterward and other meal-centered outreaches such as that. The original concept for the booth was to have a banner that said “Free Prayer” and see who showed up.

Free book giveaway

The first refinement of that original idea came when my husband read The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel and went nuts over its potential as an evangelism tool. We found a way through the publishers to obtain 1,000 books for about $1.50 each, so we got clearance from our church’s missions committee, and they footed the bill for the books, the booth, and the banner (which was donated, as it turned out). I think our budget was about $2,000.

The next step was to reserve a booth space at the festival, and we did that by calling the Junior Chamber of Commerce who sponsors the event. While they welcomed us, we were shoved off the main midway area, along with some other “religious” booths, a bit out of the main stream of traffic. This was very ironic, considering the most visible booth was for psychic readings!

The placement of the booth turned out to be perfect, and isn’t that just like Jesus? We had a corner, and we found that people were comfortable talking to us for long periods of time because they weren’t blocking the midway.

"How can we pray for you?"

Another refinement was to change the idea for the sign message from “Free Prayer” to “How can we pray for you?” I really think it worked out well. Even non-believers in a crunch will ask for prayer about a surgery coming up or a loved one. So we purchased a big blank book and covered it with Psalm 37:4—”Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Inside we had a space for “name,” “request,” and “phone number,” in case the person wanted to be followed-up. We liked the idea of a person writing their request in their own hand. I believe God honored that.

The one thing we did not want to do was to pray with people right on the spot, unless they requested it. We wanted to be subtle and respectful of the folks who stopped in. People really seemed to like that idea of writing their own requests. For follow up, I copied all pages of the book 30 times and gave each booth worker their own copy so that we can all follow up and continue to keep those folks in prayer. When phone numbers are indicated, the person from the booth will call to follow-up.

The book giveaway was very positive

The book The Case for Faith was a wonderful choice, and we had many people return to the booth one or two days after receiving their book, asking for three or four more copies to give to others. Isn’t that great?! We distributed about 500 books over the weekend and have since donated the rest to various ministries like the Salvation Army men’s group and to a prison ministry or two. The book, while not as simple as More than a Carpenter, still has a lot of appeal to a person of average intelligence. Because it deals with the eight basic objections to having a belief in God, it hits most people right where they live, including Christians.

We have really had a lot of positive feedback and only one person that we know of was disturbed at our choice of book. She is a very “go by the book” believer, who uses the Word in all situations no matter what. She felt this book could plant doubts in people’s minds because it deals with such tricky issues. I live by the belief, “Know the truth and the truth will make you free.” So I did not relate to her concerns at all. Please judge for yourself.

We had a little book plate made up with the name of our church and the saying “Have a nice day!” on it, and we placed one in every book. We did this not only to encourage folks to worship with us, but also to demonstrate credibility by being a bona fide local church, not a “cult.”

We also chose not to give books to children under junior high age, without an adult being with them, because we wanted to be above reproach in the distribution of the books.

People were thrilled that the book was free. They wondered what the catch was, at first, but realized we were for real after they observed us over time.

Staffing the booth

The way we set up the booth was to have four people working two-hour shifts. We found that two or three people would have been adequate in a standard 10 x 10 booth. Having too many folks working was not optimal. Two-hour shifts were good.

Personality-wise, we did notice a few things: outgoing, friendly people generally did better in the booth and had more fun than quieter folks. Locals who knew a lot of the people coming by the booth perhaps had the most productive outcomes, at least in the short-run.

Letting people come up to us to see what we were about worked pretty well, but next year we will do two things differently:

We will print out some main points from the book and display them on the back wall of the booth so people have a better idea what the book really is about. We encouraged our booth workers to read the book ahead of time, but not all were able to. It’s hard to answer questions about something you are not familiar with.
We will have a consumable substance to draw people to the booth, like candy or free coffee or hot chocolate. Do according to the weather. We had rain, so coffee and hot stuff was good. If it is hot, maybe give out iced tea or lemonade would be better.

Some of the results

The most encouraging things that happened included sensing real support from the folks who ran the festival. They told us, “Next year, we’ll give you a better spot!” The mayor of the town said she was glad we were there, as did the police and firefighters who came by. The carnival ride operators, who live a nomadic lifestyle, really appreciated our praying for their needs, and they were very open and responsive to our ministry to them. I personally had a lot of divine appointments. It was amazing, really. I spoke to a few “fallen away” Christians who took our conversation as being from the Lord. I saw no hostility the whole weekend and a lot of appreciation for what we were offering.

We had about forty people from our church who signed up to staff the booth. As near as we can figure, we had a couple hundred people who actually wrote down requests. It is hard to get an accurate count because we had a lot of repeat visitors, but roughly we had contact with more than 400 people and distributed 500 books.

I believe God was glorified, I believe the church was edified, and I believe people were encouraged in their faith. The main thing that really worked was that we stuck to our original vision of offering a service to people who stopped by. They came to us and we responded. We did not go out “hawking” anything, and people were very pleased with that. We did not make a spectacle by laying hands on them right in the booth. Rather, we honored the requests that they shared with us by having them write them down for us to follow-up.

A lot of the conversation got very deep very quickly. I would recommend having at least one mature believer in your booth at all times. We had a training session where we stressed for our workers to “think lost,” to use language that would not alienate people, to be sincerely caring and sensitive to the needs of those who came by, and to respond, not initiate conversation. It worked, and the Lord honored this effort.

A final thought: we ended up bringing in a tablecloth and some plants just to enhance the ambiance of the booth. I think eye appeal doesn’t hurt!

Also see:

	Pause for Prayer, June 7, 2001 - report on this event
	Other ideas for Reaching Out in Word and Deed

Kinney Cathcart is actively involved in the Fellowship Bible Church, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and in prayer ministries throughout northeast Ohio. She is also one of the prayer leaders on daily radio program, "Pause for Prayer," on WCRF-FM in Cleveland.