In New York City, Pastor Brian Kelly has a very large mission field. Several years ago, he stood at an intersection and watched the people streaming past and prayed for a way to reach them with the gospel. He knew that street preaching would catch the attention of a few of the thousands. But the seed planted in their hearts would soon die in the jostle of the big city.

Unless you gave them something to take with them that would not be discarded, the effort was mostly wasted. He knew that the Bible commissioned him as a believer to “preach” the gospel. And he knew that gospel tracts had been very effective in previous generations, but even if these hurried people were persuaded to take one, they would likely discard it at the first opportunity.

But he remembered a tract in booklet form that someone had given him that kept his attention and was too nice to throw away. It was called “Somebody Loves Me,” by Chick Publications. It had an engaging storyline presented in modern cartoon format. When he arranged to get some samples, he discovered that he could get them at a very reasonable price in larger quantities.

As he began approaching people in the street, he found that enough of them would take one of these to make it worth the effort. He also discovered that few were discarded but put in a pocket for future reading.

But some of the people that he approached were reluctant to take the tract because it was in English instead of their preferred language. He began to carry with him some of the more common languages, but that was not enough. It turns out that there are over 700 languages spoken in the New York area.

A member of Pastor Kelly's team handing out tracts in New York.

Also, Pastor Kelly soon realized that handing out the tracts one-to-one had serious limitations. Even with a team, only a few hundred a day could be handed out to the thousands streaming by the intersection. He came up with a plan to set up a display table adjacent to the traffic flow. There he could make available a variety of languages as well as tracts that dealt with some of the other religions.

With some concern, he carefully positioned the table on public property to avoid conflict. When no one seemed to object, he filled the table with as many titles and languages as he could fit. Even with the extra display space, he frequently came up disappointed that he did not have the exact tract for someone’s language or worldview.

He decided that he could maximize his tablespace by using commercial display racks like you see in the pictures. Over the years, the demand has increased to the point where he now sets up multiple tables with racks in order to display all of the literature that people want or need.

Pastor Kelly is not given to small ideas. As he continued to watch the thousands passing through that intersection, he couldn't shake the burden that even those who didn't stop and take something from the display still needed the gospel. He decided to challenge some of the other pastors that knew of his passion, to come for a three-day blitz of gospel tracts reaching as many of those others as they could.

His strategy was to position other teams and street preachers at surrounding intersections with a large supply of gospel tracts. They would try to get a tract in the hands of everyone that they could throughout the entire district. He placed orders for a large enough quantity that they would have more than enough, knowing that he could later stock his display with any leftovers. He scheduled it for the middle of June when New York’s streets were the busiest.

Over 40 people responded to Pastor Kelly's invitation, and they were able to hand out about 50,000 tracts in four days. At least six people prayed for salvation with the team members. You can see one of these prayer sessions going on in the lower right corner of the picture below.

But Pastor Kelly says that it is not about results, but it is about obedience. There are two sides to the Great Commission; making disciples and preaching the Word. The “preaching” does not specify if you get results, it just says to get the good news in front of as many as possible and leave the results to the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle Paul asks in Romans 10, “how shall they hear without a preacher?” Over the centuries, the church has discovered that not all preachers are flesh and blood. Some are paper and ink, particularly since the invention of printing. In fact, God chose to use a lot of paper and ink to distribute His own words in all the Bibles.

Through the book tables and blitzes, pastor Kelly’s vision has been responsible for putting over 400,000 paper preachers in the last year in the hands of hurried people in New York’s international melting pot. And many of those tracts are patiently sitting in a desk drawer or someone's coat pocket waiting for a divine appointment with a desperate heart.

Over the years, a number of other soul winners have heard of pastor Kelly's success in preaching the gospel through no-nonsense Chick tracts. He has been able to coach them in duplicating his strategy.

Anyone wishing more information on setting up public displays, or how they can become involved in funding more tracts for him, can call Pastor Kelly at 646 267 1338, email: kingjamesbiblebaptistchurch@gmail.com. His mailing address is King James Bible Baptist Church, 1026 6th Ave., Suite 201, New York, NY, 10018. The church website is www.kingjamesbiblebaptistchurch.com