Customized Outreach Strategy
This is the eighth article in a series about church consulting here on Church Encourager. After we have acquired some information about the church and about the surrounding community we try to come up with an effective plan to ‘reach out’.
Defining Outreach
What do we mean by ‘Outreach’? Outreach is an effort by individuals in an organization or group to connect its ideas or practices to the efforts of other organizations, groups, specific audiences or the general public.
What is an ‘Outreach Strategy”? An outreach strategy is a specific set of tactics intended to attract new people. Depending on your organization, an outreach strategy can consist of one action or a combination of multiple tactics.
I read somewhere that it takes a church an average of eighteen “touches” before it begins to have an impact on a person’s life.
What do you mean by a ‘touch’? We are borrowing the concept of ‘touch-point’ from marketing language. A touch-point is a contact with a person, which could be a face-to-face meeting, an email, a social media message, a poster with information about an event, etc.
Suggested Outreach Ideas
I was consulting with a church in Connecticut recently. They have been in decline for a few years and were looking for ways to attract some new people into their church family. They have a long history in their community and they meet in a beautiful, historic facility that is well taken care of. What we came up with was a simple Outreach Strategy of three events that they can implement to meet some new people.
1) FREE Community Picnic – The church facility is on a beautiful piece of property. I suggested that they host a free community picnic. Rent a couple of bounce houses, provide free hot dogs and chips and popcorn, set up a cornhole station, etc. Have some signs on the road that encourage people to stop in and check it out. This is a great way to meet some new people and have them check out the church facility and grounds in a non-church format.
2) FREE Community Movie Night – Since a lot of churches already have some projection equipment, a movie night can be an excellent outreach. A night out at the movies is very expensive for families these days so an opportunity to take the family to a movie for free is attractive to many people, particularly young families. If you are looking to draw people from outside the church you need to show movies that are culturally popular. We suggest ‘family friendly’ movies. To do this properly you need to purchase a license to show movies in this way. You should also provide free popcorn.
3) 1.00 Car Wash – A one dollar car wash is a another effective way to meet some new people. Gather a small group of volunteers, get set up with hoses and brushes and soapy water and wave people off the road in for a car wash. The hook is at the end when they go to pay the $1.00, you actually give them $1.00. As much as people want to give you money, don’t take it. The whole idea is to give away and bless people.
Every church will have different situations to deal with so a customized outreach strategy can look a lot of different ways. These are just a few simple ideas that you may want to incorporate as you look for ways to ‘reach out’ to your community.
Steve Lawes is a Certified Church Consultant and a Church Encourager.
