kicking it up a notch

Easter Egg Hunt happening this Saturday... 15,000 eggs lots of vols to help should be a huge day...

We decide to post a huge invite to our Easter services on HWY 35 main route into and out of Dayton. Nice!

Also 500 home signs have been posted in yards all over the city. A great way to create buzz.

Peeps

Peeps were a hit today. We moved a couple display tables around the Vineyard. People liked the vibe and look. Kids were especially interested. As people left they picked up a few boxes of peeps with our special invite connect card. It's a corny way of promoting something fun that's familiar with most everyone.

The cards can also be used to invite friends and family to the Easter services. For me I'm glad people attend even if it is once a year. Who can know what is going on in a heart after they hear the good news of Jesus? or, What can happen in a heart when they bump into a life crisis later on? Who knows, they may remember, respond and receive.

Easter Egg Hunt Promo

Peeps Invite

Thanks to Stacy for allowing us to use one of her peeps pictures. see her photos on Flickr. (always good to ask great photo people for permission)

We have hundreds of peeps for the next two weekends to give to people with the card as a kind invite. Times are on the back of the card.

Love the Picture... Thanks again Stacy.

Easter Outreach Time

Now's the time to prepare for Easter celebrations, one of the largest attended services each calendar year. We tend to gear up, plan outreach and  develop creative invitations. For some reason people like to visit during the Easter season. I am glad they do. Each attender has the potential to have an open heart to receive God's Good News. Our job is to invite, nurture and enhance their experience. So we plan carefully.

This year we will be having some special invite cards, playing off the PEEPs idea encouraging people to take a box of Peeps with a connect card to their friends and neighbors inviting them to our Easter Services. Bring your Peeps to the Vineyard this year. (Hey, I know it's corny, but corny can be fun)

We will also launch our Giant Easter Egg Hunt which has attracted thousands of people over the last several years. I call this broadcast event:

Visibility Outreach...

A few years ago I wrote a booklet titled Explaining Evangelism. (badly edited, poor grammar but my first shot at writing... it sold 10k copies and translated into 3 languages in 1991)

In one chapter I mention the concept of visibility evangelism... Defined: it's the consistent, being out there, going, sowing, caring, praying, serving others component.

Consistently going into a community can raise visibility and re-define who you are to your community. We often define ourselves by what we believe. Our communities, on the other hand, define us by what we do. Often people define us by saying, "Oh, your that pretty good church that does so much for our community."

Here are a few visibility tips:
Advertise. During major holiday seasons, use newspapers, web-sites, blogs. Develop tickets or invitations to give to your people so they can invite their friends, families or workmates.

Think professional, upbeat, fun, colorful, and memorable. Think about developing sticky Ideas... that stick.

Establish High Impact Community / Church-wide On-ramps.  Easter Egg Hunt, Summer Community FunFests, Block Parties, 4th of July water giveaway, Turkey's giving away Turkeys, Stuff the Bus, Halloween Funfest and our Christmas Party for the less-served make a huge impact on our community. Last year over 1000 people served in some way as we moved out into the community to create God Space. 

People who serve others also tend to be more outward focused, more balanced, more caring, and more likely to share their faith with others than those who do not serve.

Consistency. This is the key to raising your visibility within your community. We have our outreach year seasonally planned. We are consistent. We just keep on keeping on. We go. We share. We serve. We care. We also seek to be openhearted people who are Bringers and Includers. This is the hard work Jesus spoke about in John 4. 

 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.36 Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.

38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Because of our hard work the community now defines us as the pretty good church who actively cares for our community.

Result
Each week people from our community come to the Vineyard to check us out. Many, discover faith, then begin to go out to serve others. It's the cycle of Sowing, Reaping, and Increasing.

Good deeds, creates good will, that opens hearts to the good news. 

Rick Rusaw Eric Swanson

The Externally Focused Church