Door to Door in Andrews

Walking hundreds of miles and visiting 5,000 unique doors to personally invite every single resident within city limits to church may seem like an impossible task, but one pastor in the West Texas district is doing this for the fourth time in five years.

In 2020, Andrews First Assembly of God pastor Josh Morris began to feel an unshakable burden to reach the lost in his community. Andrews, an oil and gas town in the Permian Basin of Texas, is home to around 15,000 people. According to Morris, there is an extreme dichotomy between the wealthy and the less fortunate in the city, due to its main industry. And while there are a lot of churches, he says, there are a lot of lost people.

Morris and his wife, Laura, who is also an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God, have been pastoring Andrews First AG for almost 16 years. After graduating from Nelson University (formerly Southwestern Assemblies of God University), Morris and his wife pastored in Dumas, Texas. But in 2009, they sensed the Lord leading them to Andrews. Four years ago, the two began to feel compelled by the Spirit to “get out and do something” about all of the unreached souls in the community.

“We didn’t want to be pastors who sat around and hoped for things to happen,” Morris says. “We wanted to start doing something ourselves.”

The couple had thousands of invitations to their church printed, detailing the church’s information, along with a few Scriptures, and a short blurb about the church and what they believe. With the invitations in hand, the couple set out.

“We were determined to get these inside every residence within the city,” Morris states.

Knowing that they would potentially face some unsafe situations as they traversed through impoverished neighborhoods riddled with drugs and violence, Morris committed himself and the mission of the work to the Lord, determined to go to every door. By the end of his journey, Morris had walked hundreds of miles across the city of Andrews and visited the door of each residence.

“We had some rejection, we encountered some vicious dogs, we saw a lot of crime, but we also saw reception to what we were doing,” he says. “The Lord was with us and kept us safe.”

Morris and his wife began to see a lot of the people they invited start attending the church. So, they did it again, and again. Now in their fourth time of canvasing the city, Morris states that the face of Andrews First AG has “changed drastically,” with more and more people coming through the doors of the church thanks to the simple gesture of a personal invitation.

One such family, who started attending after receiving one of the Morris’ invitations, has been attending the church for two years and recently saw two of their children baptized. They are now involved in the church as a family and just welcomed a third child.

Glenn Beaver, district superintendent of the West Texas district says, “[Josh and Laura] have faithfully endeavored to reach this community with the gospel. [They] are wonderful examples of what it means to pastor a community and are a beautiful witness to the light and love of Christ.”

“We love people, we want to witness to them. I want people to go out and tell others about Jesus and invite them to church but I’m not one of those pastors that wants to tell people how to do it and not do it myself. Laura and I want to lead by example,” Morris says.

In addition to his door-to-door efforts, Morris also leaves church invitations at gas stations, grocery stores, and even the post office. “People need Jesus and time is running out,” he says, explaining his reason for always having an invitation ready to give away.

The culture of the church matches Morris’ evangelistic efforts.

“Some people call us ‘old school,’ but really we just push the basics.” He states that the heartbeat of his ministry is simply preaching the Word. In fact, the church’s slogan is the clear, simplistic statement, “Where the Word of God is preached.”

Morris has preached verse by verse through dozens of books of the Bible and plans to continue leading the congregation through the Scriptures.

“We emphasize that we have to be built upon the bedrock of Scripture,” he says. And although it has taken him nearly 3,000 sermons to preach verse by verse through 37 books of the Bible, he plans to continue his expository style preaching, citing the growth he has seen in his congregants’ spiritual lives since taking this approach.