Members Password:  
Pleasant Valley Missions
 
A Report on Pleasant Valley's
Correspondence Mission

Friday, January 11, 2008

The PV Correspondence Ministry is alive and well. I just compiled some stats from 2007. Since mid-February of 2007 when we started keeping the stats, we mailed 4,563 lbs of lessons across the world. That is an average of 114 lbs. for each week we mailed (which is most weeks; we occasionally do not mail because of a holiday).

Remember that for each lesson mailed, it involves most of the following tasks:

  • recording that the lesson is returned sending some lessons to a teacher at another church or (for most lessons) grading it here possibly answering a student's question(s)
  • "stuffing" the graded lesson (with other material, such as a tract, Bible, or one-page calendar, new lesson book)
  • stamping our return address in each new lesson book
  • cutting out and taping the student address to the envelope
  • sealing the envelope
  • mailing in bulk

We are grateful for our core of about 19 regular volunteers who help with many of the tasks listed above. I am also very thankful for the dedicated staff of 3 ladies that I work with.
.
The following table shows lessons sent in 4 categories for the past 5 years.

Bible Lesson 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003
WEI 4,415 5,834 7,693 8,602 8,585
WBS intros 30,506 10,553 14,882 18,978 11,327
Other WBS 4,616 4,354 5,192 5,840 5682
Advanced 146 110 131 127 310
Total 39,683 20,851 27,898 33,547 25,904

Please note:

  • 2006 was a "down" year; we sent out fewer lessons in almost every category than every other year.
  • 2007 was a "banner" year; we sent out triple the intros over the previous year.
  • WEI lessons continue to decline; in 2003, WEI was 1/3 of total lessons sent, in 2007, WEI was about 1/10.
  • The number of "other WBS" and advanced lessons has stayed fairly constant over the last 5 years.
  • We are looking at some ways of increasing the number of students who stay with the program and move to more and more advanced lessons.
  • With the increase in intros sent out in 2007, we expect and hope for an increase in "other WBS" lessons to be returned.

We have more extensive data on all of this. If any of you would like to see it, or have any questions, please ask.

Those of us who work in the Correspondence Ministry wish that we knew of all the baptisms that come about directly as a result of the correspondence ministry, but we don't. In fact, we hear of relatively few baptisms. However, we believe that much good (baptisms and otherwise) does occur due to the extensive spreading of God's word via the world's postal systems. May God give the increase and receive the glory from these efforts!

~ Roger Pritchett

 

Back

 
Pleasant Valley Church of Christ
10900 Rodney Parham Road
Little Rock, AR 72212
Phone: (501) 225-5818
Fax: (501) 225-3689
e-mail:
publications@pvcc.org