What does your church do to let people know you exist?

[Tom Hart]

Our church, in the middle of a residential area, remains small, and I'd appreciate some ideas for getting the word out and inviting neighbours.

Obviously, to me the first step is a website, which we currently don't really have. One idea that my wife floated was an Instagram account. I'm not a big fan of social media, but what she proposed to do with it sounded smart and tasteful. (Apparently Instagram is quite popular around here, while Facebook is not.)

Any other ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[Polanus1561]

Christmas (Gasp!), Good Friday tracting

 

[RamistThomist]

This isn't the only thing, but a good website or even an updated facebook page works wonders.

 

[Edward]

I'm not sure how my usual pontifications would work in a culture of which my only knowledge comes from my father's descriptions of his time there in the early 1950s.

But generally speaking, in the US a church without a decent website is a church that is saying it doesn't want new members. Another thing I would suggest in the US would be targeted mailing in the surrounding residential area, particularly if they can be focused on people moving into the area.

 

[B.L.]

Since you are in Korea have you thought about getting your church up and running on Naver Cafe?

I'd also recommend some good old fashioned street evangelism. Get out there and pass out gospel tracts, disposable breathing masks, travel packs of tissue, etc. with your church's contact info and service times printed on them. Pound the pavement out there. Since you are a native English speaker perhaps even starting up a Bible Study for Children to the families in the immediate neighborhood.

Just brain storming here...

 

[Romans922]

Website only to point to and reference for people to go to when you leave them.

BUT #1 EVANGELISM
#2 EVANGELISM going into the neighborhood and meeting people and being willing to sit down with them (if they are willing) and call them to believe the Gospel.
#3 EVANGELISM tracts (Gospel) and ways to contact the congregation (website).
#4 EVANGELISM inviting people to worship..

 

[Tom Hart]

But generally speaking, in the US a church without a decent website is a church that is saying it doesn't want new members.

I'm with you there. It was hard to find the church to begin with, and then when there's no info on it? Not a good look, especially with so many cults around.

 

[Tom Hart]

Since you are in Korea have you thought about getting your church up and running on Naver Cafe?

We have a Naver Café page, but, for whatever reason, it's for members only. No idea what the reasoning is behind that move.

I'd also recommend some good old fashioned street evangelism. Get out there and pass out gospel tracts, disposable breathing masks, travel packs of tissue, etc. with your church's contact info and service times printed on them. Pound the pavement out there. Since you are a native English speaker perhaps even starting up a Bible Study for Children to the families in the immediate neighborhood.

Just brain storming here...

Brainstorming appreciated!

I am not sure about tracts, but I'm not one for coming up with with anything more creative. There are so many cults here that do tracts, so people generally just dismiss it all. (Speaking for myself, I do appreciate the free tissues.) I think a very simple tract might be OK.

The English idea is not a bad one. I'll suggest something to the pastor.

 

[Logan]

The absolutely most effective for us has been word of mouth and personal relationships.

But some things we have tried have been

• Website. This is an important presence and we do have contacts through this from time to time.
• Google Maps. We have our church listed as a business and have actually received dozens of calls because of it. Unfortunately almost all of them are people looking for help with rent or utilities.
  
• Facebook. Lots of people use it (not me) but having a church page is apparently a decent way to get the word out to people who are looking for something Reformed.
• Facebook advertising (purchasing ad space). I don't know that we have had any success in that though.
• Google ads. I don't know how effective it has been, but it's been a couple of hundred dollars a month to buy ads and we have had probably a couple hundred people view our site. No way to tell if any of those (or all) are bots, although presumably Google would try to prevent that.
• Flyers in surrounding neighborhoods (out of a couple hundred flyers I don't think we had anyone attend).
• Radio advertisements (surprisingly inexpensive), again no callers or contacts that were measured and not even a noticeable uptick in website traffic.

 

[RamistThomist]

Website only to point to and reference for people to go to when you leave them.

BUT #1 EVANGELISM
#2 EVANGELISM going into the neighborhood and meeting people and being willing to sit down with them (if they are willing) and call them to believe the Gospel.
#3 EVANGELISM tracts (Gospel) and ways to contact the congregation (website).
#4 EVANGELISM inviting people to worship..

All of that is good (though I think tracts peaked out around 1980), but websites let people know your church exists, the times, etc.

 

[Afterthought]

Website. Sermon audio and sharing sermons with family and friends (especially on facebook). Social media pages and groups (the facebook one seems to work the best; I think we stopped doing twitter). People in our congregation sharing about our church with people on Facebook in conversation when the topic comes up (e.g., what church do you go to? Or, I'm visiting X, can you recommend a church?). Live streaming. An article in the paper. Street evangelism at a university. Business cards to hand out as conversations come up in day to day life. Bible studies that some members do with their friends. There is also a local exhibition that comes up each Fall, but we were not allowed in to set up a table (despite the PCUSA being allowed in).

 

[Romans922]

All of that is good (though I think tracts peaked out around 1980), but websites let people know your church exists, the times, etc.

Which is why I stated what I stated at the very beginning, "Website only to point to and reference for people to go to when you leave them." I am pro-website, pro-facebook. But that is just a very small and I'd say a necessary thing to be done, but minuscule compared to what God commands us to do.

Tracts of themselves have a purpose. Ps. 19 it is God's word that converts the soul. People often don't want to or have time to talk, give them a tract with your church information on the back.

 

[W.C. Dean]

I was directed to put our OPC church on Google Maps and that surprisingly helped. Some of our members left a few reviews on Google and now typing reformed church or Presbyterian church in our area brings up our church as one of the first results. Beyond that we have people come through our website or the OPC website (that's how I joined) because we are basically the only confessional reformed church on the whole of two peninsulas. Also members invite friends and family.

 

[RamistThomist]

Tracts of themselves have a purpose. Ps. 19 it is God's word that converts the soul. People often don't want to or have time to talk, give them a tract with your church information on the back.

That's true. It was a Jack Chick tract that first warned me against Freemasonry.

 

[Romans922]

We just use the Trinitarian Bible Society one's. They are just scripture. No fancy diagrams...

 

[Jake]

I've been helping with this for my church. Here's some of what we do:

• Website. Also just re-designed ours. Make sure you have details about visiting. A modern look helps too. Also some simple search engine optimization can help. As one example, our mailing address is a small town 20 minutes away, and we are closer to some bigger towns that more people search for, so we call out other towns we are near on our site. That example is probably unique to being in a semi-rural area, but there are lots of ways you can make your site easier to search.
  
• Facebook page with regular posts and events. This seems to be the preferred social media around here, although its not as popular with the teens (about everyone older uses it though -- we have a private Instagram for youth events). Have information about your church, which is a lower barrier of entry than a website. Also folks often say they're going to events or will share posts, which are often about sermons or just good quotes from Puritans and the like our pastor shares.
• Google Maps. Make sure information is up-to-date here.
• Door to door visiting. We have been doing this with new neighborhoods being built right near our church. So far we have not had much success from this, but we've had a few visitors.
• Special events. We have things like a barbecue fundraiser for missions that we do every year where we pass out flyers around town and also have a large banner outside of our church whenever we have a special event.
  
• Google Ads. We are buying search ads right now to drive more traffic to our website. We had our site for a while but it is kind of hard to find on search, so now we show up at the top for queries like "presbyterian church near x," "bible believing church x," or "reformed church in x" where x are some local towns. Now that we have a new website with better SEO we might drop this.
• Facebook Ads for events. We have tried this a couple of times and it seems to work decently well.

Our area is growing, so we want to be proactive. One of our biggest source of visitors is people finding us on the web. We actually have several new families who have joined the church who were not familiar with our denomination (only ARP Church within an hour or so) but listened to our sermons, read about us on-line, and have come. We're trying to make us as easy as possible to find via the web. The other biggest source has been members personally inviting friends. This seems to work a lot better than invites to strangers, such as door-to-door. Events bring a lot of people to us for the day, but tend to have more members of other churches who are not looking, though I think this helps us to be more known in the community and build long term relationships which have been fruitful.

 

[Jack K]

Website, Instagram, and Google Maps are all good for helping people notice you, and especially for helping people find you when they are already looking for a church like yours. And that, of course, is important.

But you should also be evangelistic, introducing yourself to people who are not already looking for a church like yours. That brings in a whole different set of strategies.

Do you have your own building? Your approach to your building, if you have one, is a key part of evangelism. Both my current church and my previous one employed a two-fold approach to the building: (1) make sure you are regularly going out, and (2) find ways to regularly invite people in.

Under (1): realize that the building can insulate you. So, do some evangelism in public places. Take some of your ministries outside. Make sure the church's work and worship is not confined to a single, largely hidden space. Just as friendly neighbors are those who leave their homes and walk across the street, realize that your church is not really being friendly unless it leaves the building from time to time and goes into public spaces.

Under (2): realize that the building can feel closed off to outsiders, even when they have been invited to services. So, find non-threatening and neighborly ways to get people into your building for other purposes. Open your space to the community when you can. People who have been inside your building for a community event, and have learned to feel comfortable and welcomed there, become more likely to try a service there. They view you as a friend, not a recluse.

I sometimes encounter churches with a conviction that the worship service should be their only public ministry. But the church is called to evangelize, and offering nothing but a worship service often makes lousy evangelism. Friendly, outgoing churches also do some things just to be neighborly. So get into public spaces and share your building. It's the first step to winsomely sharing the gospel.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

Any other ideas?

There is a festival in town each spring. Vendors come to hawk their wares. We set up a booth giving away copies of the New Testament and evangelistic literature. We have done it for some years and never had anyone come to the church as a result. But ultimately, the Word of God is being shared and that is why we do it. All we can do is sow the seed and wait on the Lord for the increase.

We also hold public baptisms. These are in places where folks are fishing and recreating on Sunday. We come to the river to sing God's praise, bear a testimony to Christ's gospel, and publicly obey his ordinance.

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

We have an enormous sign outside that says "James White was an Elder here up until sorta recently."

(Ha ha ha).

No we don't.

 

[Stephen L Smith]

We have an enormous sign outside that says "James White was an Elder here up until sorta recently."

I did find his departure a little strange especially since he had eldership responsibilities to his flock. No doubt there are personal reasons but eldership responsibilities are not to be taken lightly.

 

[CovenantWord]

Our mission work in rural Maine regularly hosts a kiosk in the annual fair, which is the best-attended recurring social event in the region. In my judgment, the probabilities that our efforts will eventuate in an unchurched stranger becoming a committed part of our fellowship are minuscule, so that stewardship would demand a redirection of resources, were that the only expectation. However, it does render other significant benefits:
-- fostering a sense of purpose and solidarity within the fellowship,
-- affording opportunity to witness more fully to pagan acquaintances and visitors,
-- and encouraging informal contact with other conservative Christian ministries and churches operating in the area.
In short, this outreach has a more immediately visible effect on the evangelizers than it does on the evangelees. When the Lord works with and through us, are we not thereby blessed (Mark 16:20)?

 

[Andrew35]

Our mission work in rural Maine regularly hosts a kiosk in the annual fair, which is the best-attended recurring social event in the region. In my judgment, the probabilities that our efforts will eventuate in an unchurched stranger becoming a committed part of our fellowship are minuscule, so that stewardship would demand a redirection of resources, were that the only expectation. However, it does render other significant benefits:
-- fostering a sense of purpose and solidarity within the fellowship,
-- affording opportunity to witness more fully to pagan acquaintances and visitors,
-- and encouraging informal contact with other conservative Christian ministries and churches operating in the area.
In short, this outreach has a more immediately visible effect on the evangelizers than it does on the evangelees. When the Lord works with and through us, are we not thereby blessed (Mark 16:20)?

Those points, slightly amended for a different context, are about the same benefits I've argued for short-term mission trips.

 

[brendanchatt]

Following @JimmyH

 

[ZackF]

I did find his departure a little strange especially since he had eldership responsibilities to his flock. No doubt there are personal reasons but eldership responsibilities are not to be taken lightly.

Men on this forum have taken other pastoral callings and I haven’t found it strange.

 

[jwithnell]

A 21-gun salute at 5 a.m. on Sundays generally gets people's attention

In 2020, people like to know where they're going. At the very least, giving hours and directions on the internet is expected of any organization that wants to be taken seriously. On a more personal level, pictures and encouraging text give people an idea if your church is a "good fit" before they walk in the door. While this may apply to the "me-centric" crowd it also applies to people at vulnerable times in their lives, especially as fewer people have a background that includes the church.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

Our public book burnings have been well attended and attracted a surprising degree of interest from the community.

 

[Bill The Baptist]

Our public book burnings have been well attended and attracted a surprising degree of interest from the community.

I’ve got a few copies of the Purpose Driven Life if you run out of fuel.

 

[alexandermsmith]

I generally like to keep a low profile so I prefer that my church does nothing to let people know I exist. Those who need to know (and who I want to know), do.

 

[Tom Hart]

I generally like to keep a low profile so I prefer that my church does nothing to let people know I exist. Those who need to know (and who I want to know), do.

Good one. I had to read that twice before I got it.

 

[ChrisJuloya]

In our district (called a "barangay"), the district office have installed speakers on light posts by the streets, because when they have district announcements, they want to be sure everyone would hear.

I wonder if using this would make the community become aware of our churches' existence?

Kidding aside, facebook would really be the most basic way to make the people know the church exists. One of our churches posts Heidelberg Catechism Q&As that are also shared by the members. Sometimes, a post of the recording of the sermon. And even a simple post to invite and remind people that it is the Lord's Day (whether the day before or on the day itself), indicating the sermon series for the day, the passage(s), and so on.