More than 350 teens share Christ across Auburn

Knock and the door will be opened. If not, hang an info bag on the knob, say a prayer and move on to the next. Repeat, repeat, repeat. If you live in the city limits of Auburn, chances are that these instructions were recently followed on your front porch, and chances are you noticed indications of the reason why.
   
Marquees of local businesses along with scores of campaign-styled yard signs have for weeks advertised what Hal Cooper said, in hindsight, “was probably the most significant spiritual event in Auburn’s history.” And with 280 souls saved in just three days, he just might be right.
   
Cooper, Lakeview Baptist Church’s minister of prayer and evangelism and former assistant coach for the Auburn University track and field team, supervised the effort.
   
With such impressive numbers, the efforts of hundreds of visiting teenagers and of thousands of local volunteers, Cooper said, “For this town, and for our church, when you look at how many homes have been touched by this, this is huge.”
   
“This” is known simply as “Encounter Jesus.”
   
For three hot, humid days, July 26–28, plus two days of training, Lakeview hosted an all-out, youth-driven evangelistic blitzkrieg with a grand scope: “Get the gospel to every house in the city.”
   
Lakeview Pastor Al Jackson said the church received some help from Frontliners — a ministry dedicated to helping churches reach their communities for Christ while providing a sense of mission to participating youth groups. It was founded by Evangelist Kelly Green, a graduate of the University of Mobile, and a friend of Jackson’s.
   
“(Encounter Jesus) was an opportunity to partner with someone I know and trust,” Jackson said.
But what exactly is Encounter Jesus? The answer is simple. With the help of thousands of congregational volunteers, Lakeview hosted 360 teenagers from churches scattered across eight states — as close as Georgia and Florida and as far away as Oklahoma and Ohio.
   
Combined with a force of 70 from Lakeview’s own youth group, these teens took to the streets of Auburn with the intent of sharing the gospel by knocking on the door of every home in the city — all 21,614 of them. 
   
That was the number the Encounter Jesus mapping committee developed by combining census figures as well their own count gathered from an actual physical canvassing of every neighborhood.
Armed with “standard salvation surveys,” two teams of three — one for houses on the right and one for those on the left — took to the streets with an adult supervising from the middle. The adults were there to radio in for bottled water, get help with directions or “maybe come to their rescue if the kids get in over their head.”
   
“Other than that,” said Jackson, “the adults aren’t supposed to do much.” If no one came to the door, a bag with a tract and information on Lakeview’s different ministries was hung on the doorknob.
   
“We’re not trying to get people from other churches to come to our church but there are plenty of people who don’t go to anybody’s church,” Jackson said.
   
The bags also contained invitations to a free steak dinner at Lakeview Church, catered by O’Charleys and the local Veggies To Go, owned by a member of Lakeview.
   
“We don’t know if we’re going to be able to hit every house in three days, but that’s the obvious goal,” Jackson said, minutes after a frenzied pack of kids burst out of the Lakeview sanctuary and into dozens of waiting buses and vans on the event’s first day of evangelism.
   
“Our mapping committee identified 21,000 plus doors to knock on,” Jackson said. “We thought we were going to have five to six hundred kids to do that at one time but we’re only actually working with about 350. … We don’t have the manpower we thought we’d have.”
   
But by the end of the effort the teens had managed to knock on 16,533 doors.
   
Mapping committee? War room? These terms imply heavy-duty logistics and a visit to Lakeview’s three-day war room confirms the inference: huge color-coded maps dividing Auburn into quadrants; garbling walkie-talkies; multiple phone lines and operators fielding requests for resources; and laptops projecting spreadsheets onto walls.
   
Though Cooper’s coaching experience served him well in supervising such an undertaking, he admits it was an incredible challenge. “I had nine months and volunteers who … had never done anything like this before,” he said. “But our people pulled it off. … This has eternal significance.”
   
The final numbers on that significance didn’t come in until July 30. Out of the thousands of homes visited a total of 229 people prayed, asking God for salvation. Add another 51 at the evening rallies, and that’s 280 lives changed.
   
Jackson said, “This has helped give our people a real sense of ownership in trying to reach their community. I think it’s helped rekindle and refocus the evangelical gifts we have here.”
   
Jarrett Moore agreed. The 16-year-old member of Lakeview’s youth group was teamed up with teens from Tampa’s Bell Shoals Baptist Church.
   
“It’s been sort of convicting,” Moore said. “This is my hometown and it’s strange to think that we’re bringing hundreds of youth from across the country to Auburn to do something I could have been doing all along. I’m so glad it happened. It feels great to make an impact.”