How Can Your Church Better Reach Your Local Community
While the Christian church reaches around the globe and seeks to expand into every nation, city and tribe, the church has always been fundamentally local. The local church knows the people in the town. The local church is best able to meet the needs of their local community. The local church has most of it’s influence in it’s own city.
Conversely, people want a local church. They want to worship with the people they see around their community. They want to reach out to their neighbors with the Gospel. And, to be frank, they don’t want to drive very far to get to church.
Most churches understand this in the offline world. They put up yard signs in neighborhoods around the church, they get listed in their local Yellow Pages, they send out mailings within the city, and they put on outreach events in their community. And yet there are many ways to do the same types of things in the online world that many churches are missing.
- Are you putting up “yard signs” on the websites in your neighborhood?
- Are you setting up local listings online?
- Are you looking for ways to send out messages (email, Facebook, etc) to the people of your city?
- Do you have any online events for the local community or at least promote your offline events in the online world?
These are just a few things to get you thinking about local marketing online. Offline marketing can still very effective, but with people spending more and more time online, getting their information online, and searching for things (like churches) online, the online church marketing should not be ignored.
I’ll be posting about some ways your church can start engaging people locally in coming days and weeks. In the mean time…
Tell us how what your church is doing to reach your local community online?
Image provided by Eric Carlson
So agreed!
Thanks Becky.
I love the simple ideas (like yard signs with your church web address on it) you gave to help people grow their church. I believe when it comes to Church growth most churches have not been rejected by their community they are just "invisible."
I think you are right Steve. For most churches one of the biggest issues is that that people can't find them. We need to make sure that our churches are as visible as possible.
Check out Reach The City Media at reachthecity.com. They are doing exactly what you are talking about. I found them when I was searching google for Charlotte churches, and I came across charlottechurches.com. They have like 300 sites like this.
Hey Marc,
Thanks for the info. It looks like Reach the City Media has created several city-specific local church listings sites which they are charging $30 – $50 per month to be listed in. That's a pretty steep price for a single listing. It might be worth the cost, but I'd want to see some pretty impressive traffic figures to justify that cost.
Keep in mind that most church related keywords only cost 5-10 cents a click for top rankings in Adwords. So, for even the lower cost of $30/month, you could get 300-600 actual visitors through Adwords.
I'm frustrated by leadership that now requires that our church is not hired out to people wanting to celebrate a child's birthday or to any group where we cannot or are not allowed to have a spiritual input or opportunity to share the good news of Jesus.These opportunities allows contacts to be made for follow up.
What ideas do you and others have in establishing further follow up and contacts with parents like these birthday parents. What can we give or provide by way of having the opportunity to simply explain the gospel etc.
Would appreciate a direct comment if possible to my email address
Thank you kindly
John.
John, I think some good ways of connecting with these parents (and anyone else using the church's services) and giving you the opportunity to follow up would be:
1. Give them a packet when they sign up to use the service that not only includes any rules / requirements for the service, but also includes information about becoming a follower of Christ and info about the church, being sure to include the website URL and any social accounts (FB, Twitter, etc) and encouraging them to connect.
2. Get their email address when they sign up and send them a follow up with them after the service. Be sure when you do this to really be following up with them about the service they received and have the additional information about the church as secondary. You could also send them a reminder email right before the event simply reminding them about the event, inviting them to call if they have questions, and asking them to follow/like the church in the footer of the email.
3. Send them a second follow up email inviting them to church the next week, including a link to the church's site and social accounts, and including a link to a page about the Gospel (if you have one).
4. If possible, have someone at the church when the parents show up for the birthday party both to make sure they have everything they need and to personally invite them to the church or some church event.
This should be a good start for you. The one thing I would not recommend is having the person there at the time of the event try to talk to the parent about the church / Christ when they are trying to get ready for the event. Their mind is most likely on the event, not spiritual matters.
Anyone else have any ideas?
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