Thursday, November 26, 2009

Outreach Doesn't Cost. It Pays

An often heard objection to community outreach is 'Our budget is tight. We can't afford outreach.' If you accept the truth that unless you are reaching out you are dying, it becomes more and more important to find ways to pay for it.

Living Word has looked for ways to both extend God's love to our community and fund our outreach budget even when finances are stretched. Here are some of our experiences:

Every month our Outreach Department hosts Winners Luncheon, a monthly event for the business and professional community to which our members invite their colleagues. Several hundred members and guests attend the luncheon in our fellowship hall.

Winners Luncheon doubles as both an invitational evangelism event and leadership seminar where quality local and national speakers speak on topics related to leadership.

These events more fully utilize our church facilities during the week and generate revenue at the same time. Our Luncheon guests are charged $15 per person (much cheaper than a business lunch with comparable fare) but first time attenders pay only $10. Volunteers serve the food and guests register online which helps keep administrative costs down.

Living Word annually hosts John Maxwell's Chick-fil-A Leadercast which always attracts first time guests. The business sector has been using the power of live satellite training for years. The business model for the Leadercast consists of partnering with churches to bring relevant business and leadership training to workplace leaders in their local community.

Seminar host Dr. John C. Maxwell is the author of such best-selling books as The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork. The seminar participant fees and book sales have consistently provided the revenue to offset the costs of hosting the seminar.

Angel Food Ministries is a non-profit, non-denominational food program dedicated to providing monthly food assistance to over 500,000 families in 43 states across America. Every month Angel Food provides boxes of high quality, cost effective food items at over half off grocery store prices.

Angel Food benefits our ministry in several ways. It not only helps our congregation stretch their grocery dollars, but is an excellent outreach to our community. Angel Food attracts the unchurched (one-third of our customers don’t attend church) and the ministry donates $1 per food box to our benevolence fund which offsets the administration costs and funds additional outreach.

Someone once said “When business is good, advertise. When business is bad advertise more.”

Because reaching out is to ministry as advertising is to business, don't let outreach suffer when money is tight. When the economy recovers, your ministry will be further ahead than ever. Because outreach doesn't cost. It pays.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive