Good Person Booth's at Fair's & Fest's can be VERY rewarding. We have found that this type of booth offers lots of opportunities to have conversations of the gospel with people. Most people do not find the booths to be offensive and many people are eager to find out if they are truly a "good person." If this page doesn't help answer some of the questions you may have please feel free to send us a email and we will try and answer the question to the best of our ability...contact us here.
Canopies are great with sides. Need sides for rain and also so you can close-up shop if you are working a multi-day event. Many fairs and fests require you to have a fire-extinguisher even if you are not selling food/drink. Also see if you are required to have insurance? Some locations will require these things even if you are giving away drinks or water. Figure on spending around $300 on a canopy like this one.
2)PurchaseGood Person Banner from Living Waters Ministries.
This is a great banner to start a conversation. It also helps complete your booth. It is a very durable quality banner of high color, and it will cost you around $140. + shipping.
3) Workers must go through a proper Biblical Evangelism Course.
The Most important thing is making sure the people working your booth have gone through a Biblical Evangelism course such as....the Way of the Master basic evangelism course, Ambassadors Alliance , School of Biblical Evangelism,Mark Cahill's Ministries, Andy Lapin's Transfired Ministries, Paul Washer, John MacArthur's Grace to You, Lost Cause Ministries, or through Worldview Weekend. We have had others Not from our ministry try and help us out and we found out that they were presenting a different gospel message to people. Some tried to use the decisional prayer approach. Some were there just to promote their church (we never use evangelism as a marketing tool). Some when questioned about the gospel couldn't even tell us how they got saved (so we even questioned their salvation). That is also why to work in one of Good Messengers booths you must had taken an approved evangelism course. Good Messengers Ministries of Northwest Indiana works with various denominations that typically have different doctrines, but those in our ministry do agree on the same Biblical gospel message. Ultimately ask yourself...what are you at this event for? Who do you represent? The gospel MUST be Biblical and MUST be the most important thing on your agenda. Protect and Present the Biblical gospel message at ALL costs!!! Click here to see what courses Good Messengers Ministries of Northwest Indiana has to offer.
4) Use a Good Person Test Survey Form.
Even though all of our people who are working the booth know how to go through the gospel using the law and don't need to use a survey form...it does give legitimacy to the person you are talking to. When you are done you can also give the person the survey. We typically have around 500 of these printed for a 2-4 day event, and sometimes we go through all of them.
Have the people who are working your booth go through the surveys with people. Don't just have people fill out the survey. The purpose of the survey is to have conversations with people. Ultimately, you are trying to talk to them about the things of God not to go through some kind of presentation. Our ministry NEVER uses the Good Person Test Booth to market ANY church or organization. We are there to share Christ and His good news of salvation. People will often ask us what church we are from and our response is, "We are just a bunch of Christians from various churches who get together to share Christ, and we are not representing any church." Most people are shocked!!! So often churches use events like these to market their church and evangelism should NEVER be used as marketing. We don't even point them to our website unless they are a Christian who is looking to get involved in evangelism. Also we never take donations in our booth (even if they try and throw the money at you)! Show people that you are there to give and share Christ with no strings attached!
5)Consider creating a Gospel Message Website or use ours.
We have a website that we point people to www.GotOurTract.com that many other organizations use. You are free to point people to this site as well. We put a website together that has a long gospel message and a section to answer questions (from the Evidence Bible and other resources). At the end of this site, approx. pg 13 the person can apply and get a 100% Free copy of Mark Cahill's book "One Heartbeat Away" sent to them. Good Messengers Ministries wanted to have a site that promotes the gospel and not some organization. The purpose of this site is to provide people with more information than what we have room for on most of our tracts and booklets. This website is what we print on all of our tracts and booklets. We have even created a "What If?" tract (our #1 tract to hand out other than the money tracts) that matches the website... you can view this on our resources page...http://www.goodmessengers.org/resources.htm
6) Select a Good Location.
You may want to check out several locations (fairs, flea-markets, fests, etc.) before committing, especially if it is summer time and there are several locations to choose from. Where is the best traffic? What is the cost and requirements for the booth space? How many days and hours is the event? How many workers are going to be needed to operate the booth? Will the event coordinator allow you to select the booth location for your tent? Make sure you aren't being placed in a grouping. For instance, one fair that we had a booth set-up they placed all the Christian churches together in a row, side-by-side. Many fair-goers would just by-pass our whole area. The location of your Good Person Booth is very important to having great conversations.
7) Booth Workers are VERY important.
Don't have too many people working the booth. Use a sign-up sheet to get people to commit to working a certain time slot. We have anywhere from 4-8 depending on the crowd. If you have too many people try to take turns working the outside of the booth as well as the inside. We typically put two-three people in front of the booth handing out tracts and getting people to take the survey. Depending on your location you may or may not be able to go into the walk-way in front of your booth to try and talk to people. The canopy booth helps because once they are willing to take the survey you can take them into your booth to have a conversation.
Dress. Have your people dress casual (jeans, t-shirts [no religious shirts], etc.) I would not recommend allowing people to wear Christian clothing (ie. Jesus saves shirts, etc.) You are trying to remove as much offense (not in the gospel, but in your presentation of the booth) to try and have conversations about the gospel. The gospel can be offensive enough without our Christian marketing of shirts, signs etc. Again, ultimately what are you trying to do...present Christ to a lost and dying world! You need to try and start-up as many conversations as you can. We try and remove as much offense as possible to have conversations without compromising the Biblical message. That is why the "Good Person Test Booth" works REALLY well. It has no mention of Jesus, Bible, etc... and people will tend to stop at your booth to find out what this "good person test" is truly about. That is also why our booth members carry pocket Bibles (for reference only if needed). We don't go around waving BIG Bibles, or carryng them around because it scares people away. Why? Think about it this way: Before you were a believer, what did you think when you saw a guy standing on a structure and waving a Bible around? Were your first thoughts, Gee I wonder what that guy is saying? I think Ill go over there and listen. Of course not. We aren't offended to carry them but in the same aspect we want to remove the offense to have as many conversations about Christ and the cross that we can. Let them hear your Bible words; let them hear your message; let them hear the tears in your voice as you proclaim the Law and Gospel. Why turn off a potential listener to your message before they even hear it by waving around a Bible?
8) Have Good Biblical Resources to Give Away on the Table.
We like to have two 6' tables with vinyl table cloths on them (easy to wipe-off). One table has handout Bibles and booklets. The other table has tract materials and extra clip boards with the Good Person Test Surveys. We put signs on the tables...saying, "ALL items on the tables are FREE. Please, DO NOT take multiples of each item" You will find that kids especially like to take handfuls of your tracts and books, and at the cost of the materials we try to limit people and watch what they take.
Below you will see some of the resources that we ALWAYS have on our tables...
d.One Heartbeat Away book. We purchase this book by the case and keep them in a tub under the table. This is a fantastic book to give to someone who is seeking. We don't leave this book out because of the cost (Mel will give you a GREAT deal on these), and we only give it out to serious conversations.
e. We also get many, many booklets from RBC ministries...with topics on marriage, addictions, divorce, death.
Parking Ticket... make sure if you put these on cars that it is ok to do so (we got in trouble for putting this tract on cars in the parking lot at a fair) and make sure you put them on the passenger side. Get permission to do this at fairs and fests first, but this is also a great tract to hand to police.
g. We also have countless tracts that we print ourselves or purchase through one of these three vendors. Living waters is not the only place that provides great tracts..
On the top of the inside of our canopy you will often see stuffed animals (purchase from your local dollar store), and toy items that we staple kids tracts to and give away to children. Often giving toys away to children are done in teams... while someone is giving a child a toy someone else is talking to the parents. We also do the same approach with the "curved illusion" tract...
...we use this tract to draw children and while someone is using the tract on the children someone is talking to the parents. It is a way to give back and a way to share Christ with a family with smaller children who would most likely not visit your booth. Typically we only do the stuffed animal give-away at an event such as a fair or fest that has carnival games. Be thinking of the event you are at before using certain items.
9)It is very important to keep your tables neat and clean.
No personal belongings on the tables (put workers personal belongings [purses etc] in tubs under the tables), no left over drink bottles, food etc. Consider keeping your tracts and booklets rubber banded and leave them that way on the table (in case of wind and it is also easy to pack-up again). People tend not to take items from a table that is all messed-up and covered with personal belongings.
10)Look for creative ways to share Christ.
Start to think outside of "the box" and how can you create ways to get into conversations
with people about the Lord. It is about having conversations not doing gospel presentation. We tend to look for opportunities to give back to the community and also to share Christ. Ultimately we want to talk to people about the most important thing...the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
For example, in the past we received a donation of 36 cases of Gatoraid to give away in one of our Good Person Test Booths. The event was at a 4th of July Fest during the hot summer heat. We offered FREE Gatoraid to anyone who took the "Good Person Test." Some people took the test just to get a FREE cold drink. Make sure you have lots of ice. We have a 100 gallon cooler (cooler costs about $78 from Walmart) which uses Qty. 4 22lb bags of ice each day (about $15 of ice a day). Some people who took the test for the Gatoraid forgot to even take the Gatoraid. They were so blown away by the test they were more concerned now with the state of their soul than getting a cold drink. Of course, we would offer them the Gatoraid anyway. Its not about what you can offer, the drinks, the tracts, the books...its about what Christ has to offer. Keep that in the front of what you do and you will do fine!
