Door-to-door evangelism

Door-to-door evangelism is the practice of going from house to house to share a religious message and seek converts, most strongly associated with Jehovah's Witnesses but practised also by Latter-day Saint missionaries and various evangelical groups. For Jehovah's Witnesses the ministry is a defining and obligatory activity, understood as obedience to Jesus's command to preach the good news of God's kingdom throughout the world before the end comes, and modelled on the early Christians who are described as teaching "from house to house." Witnesses devote regular hours to the work, keep records of their activity, and offer literature and Bible discussion at the door, regarding the ministry as both a duty and a means by which the householder is given opportunity to respond before the coming judgment.

The practice has repeatedly tested the legal boundaries of religious freedom, and Jehovah's Witnesses in particular have brought a series of landmark cases, especially before the United States Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century, that established important protections for door-to-door religious canvassing, distributing literature and refusing to be silenced by local ordinances, decisions that broadened free-speech and free-exercise rights for everyone. The ministry is also a frequent source of friction, unwelcome to many who are approached, and the groups that practise it have developed their own norms of politeness and persistence. It expresses a conviction, shared across the missionary faiths, that the message they carry is urgent and universal, and that it must be brought directly to people rather than waiting for them to seek it out.

Door-to-door calling is run as an administrative system rather than left to individual initiative. Each congregation is assigned a territory, mapped and divided into smaller sections, and members record on a card which addresses have been visited, what was said, and whether a return visit was invited, so that the same household is not called on repeatedly by different publishers unaware of each other's visits. Territories are rotated among congregations over a period of months so that coverage of a city is systematic rather than incidental, and a publisher's participation is tallied in monthly reports sent up through the congregation to the branch office, a reporting structure that has drawn comparison to a sales organisation as much as to a religious one, a comparison Witnesses themselves reject.

Since around 2011 the organisation has added staffed literature carts, tables set up in train stations, shopping centres and public squares, offering the same publications without approaching anyone directly, a passive method adopted explicitly because doorstep calling in large cities had become less effective, with fewer people at home and greater public reluctance to open the door to strangers. Both methods are unpaid: no member is paid for the work and no fee or offering is solicited from those visited, which the organisation presents as evidence that the work is done from conviction and not for financial gain.