In less than a month, Eric and I will be leading two breakout sessions at MinistryCOM.
We need your help. You’ve got great stories of successful ways you’ve been able to connect to your community, and we want to hear them because not all of you will be there.
Why?
One of our sessions is called, “What’s Working: A Think Tank.”
Here’s the official description.
Join us for a special meeting of the minds as we discuss what our communities are responding to. Come prepared to discuss what creative ways and tools your church is using to reach the community (web, media, marketing, etc.).
We’re going to be taking time to share successful ideas that we’ve either experienced first hand, or have heard about during the first part of the breakout.
One idea that’s “working”
For example, one thing that I’ve experienced first hand is how well word gets out for children-focused community events if you can obtain corporate sponsors, and produce a handout that schools are willing to send home with kids. I’ve got specific examples and tips I can share with the breakout group.
What’s working for your church or ministry?
We’d love to hear about your home runs and share them with the folks at MinistryCOM. Please take a few minutes to comment below, or email hello@mediasalt.com.
Here’s an idea thats “working” for us.
This summer we went on a campaign to give away 20,000 bottles of water to “Quench” thirst in our community. We’ve been doing it for a few months and it’s going really well. We had custom water bottles made with our Quench logo and some basic church info on it. Church members take water by the case and give it out to someone that may be thirsty. It’s been a simple way for people to simply connect with others. Doors have been open to share about Jesus, invite them to church and in some cases pray with people on the spot. We built an online community around it using FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/trcquench where people can share ideas, stories and ideas of how they’re quenching thirst in their community. So far we’ve given out roughly 14,000 bottles of water.
At Henderson Hills (hhbc.com) we’ve been using text messaging to communicate with our congregants. We use TextMarks.com.
One way this service has worked especially well is communicating with parents during summer camp. We send a message out to parents of High Schoolers at camp, for example, when their busses arrive at camp and then, on the way home, send out periodic updates on our location and estimated time of arrival. Parents seem to appreciate it.
We also used livestream.com this year to stream live video from our High School and Kids camps during the evening services so that parents could watch at home. It was great!
Hey guys, thanks for these comments. We will definitely cover them at MinistryCOM this year. Great ideas!