No ordinary plan

Things don’t always go to plan. You try to do your Christmas shopping in October, but somehow you’re still looking for gifts on the 23rd of December. You mean to ask that couple from church around for dinner, but the weeks go by and the invitation slips your mind every Sunday. This is the year you’re going to exercise more and eat better… how did another kilogram sneak on to the scales?

Back in July 2010, Matthias Media had a plan. That plan was to run a tract competition. Briefing readers could send in any evangelistic pamphlets they had written, and the winner would have their tract published, receiving royalties on any sold as well as getting 1000 copies for their own use. We’d be encouraging new writers, and everyone would benefit from another way of sharing Christ. What a great plan!

The first speed bump: there were a lot more tract authors than we anticipated. It turns out that across the world there are Christians writing great tracts suitable for their contexts. A great discovery, but a lot to read and consider and pray about. Throw in my predecessor Karen’s departure, my learning-of-the-ropes, an overworked Tony Payne, plus a rather catastrophic hard-drive failure coinciding with the competition deadline, and those best-laid plans turned into months of delays. It was March 2011 by the time we finished assessing all the submissions and contacted the entrants with the results.

There was one more change of plans, but this time it was positive. Due to the great potential of the tracts we received, it was impossible to pick just one winner. There were two tracts that we just couldn’t pass up, written by Lee Carter and Simon Flinders.

Simon’s will be ready later in 2012, but Lee’s is available now. Her tract might be just what you’re after to start a conversation.

Lee tells the story of another plan that went awry, with tragic but inspiring results. Robert Cook, a skydiving instructor, was taking Kimberley Dear, a woman he had just met, on her first jump. When he realized that their plane was going to crash, he used his body to protect her from the brunt of the impact. She was seriously injured, but survived. Robert died.

It’s the tale of an ordinary man who did something extraordinary, giving up his life for a stranger. Was Robert someone incredible, someone better than other people? No; he was just a regular person who decided to make a sacrifice without ever knowing if it would be worth it.

Robert’s sacrifice was amazing for an ordinary man, but then Lee begins to tell the reader about another man who also appeared ordinary to those around him. This ordinary man began doing many extraordinary things: he wasn’t a doctor but he healed the sick; he taught people but he was a carpenter, not a teacher. It turned out that he wasn’t just an ordinary man doing an extraordinary thing like Robert, but someone truly extraordinary in himself. He was unjustly killed, but was still living and talking afterwards, inspiring people who had hated him to become followers; he was the Son of God, risen and powerful.

Robert saved Kimberley’s life at the cost of his own. It was an amazingly selfless act. But Kimberley will still die one day. But the extraordinary hero Jesus’ sacrifice saves for eternity.

Lee then encourages the reader to find out more about Jesus in the Gospels, and provides websites for those who don’t have a Bible to look at. She also encourages readers to talk and ask question of the person who gave them the tract (there is a space for you to write or stamp your details in before it’s given away).

The world celebrates heroes like Robert, but still needs to hear about the extraordinary Jesus. It’s obvious from the response to our tract competition that there are lots of you out there telling them. If you haven’t written your own tract, or are looking for something new to give out, consider this one. It’s presented as a three-panel leaflet (two folds) in full colour, so bigger than pocket-sized with enough space to really tell the story. While it could be used for nearly any adult evangelism, I think it would be a particularly good tract to give to men trying to live an unordinary life, to leave people remembering them as someone brave and who made a difference. They may aspire to be capable of an act like Robert’s, but what they really need is to realize that they are more like Kimberley, unable to save themselves but in reach of someone who can.

To read the tract in full or place an order, visit http://www.matthiasmedia.com/rd.html?sku=noh.

Comments are closed.