4 Laws for Effective Outreach
Scott Evans
Scott Evans is a national leader in the church outreach movement. In 1992, Scott helped plant New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California – a church that started with 183 on its first Sunday and quickly grew to more than a thousand in attendance and gave birth to three daughter churches.
In response to requests by other churches for outreach help, Scott founded Outreach, Inc. in 1996. Outreach now works with more than 40,000 churches across the United States to maximize their outreach effectiveness.
Outreach website.
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What we do really matters.
Communicating tells us we must follow the One we are following. Having good communication is a call from God. We carry God’s presence with us in everything that we do. What we say communicates God’s message to the world. It also says who or what we love.
At its core, communication is used to claim the world for Christ.
What we are doing is important- we are communicating the most important message in the world. Every person who comes to Christ in our church comes to our church because of some form of communication. Outreach is a process of building bridges to the unchurched. Effective outreach involves effective communication, but effective communication doesn’t mean effective outreach.
4 Laws for Effective Outreach
1 – Create an identity for outreach.
2 – Attract visitors by communicating the identity.
3 – Connect attenders to your church.
4 – Equip your members to be inviters.
Our members are our best communicators.
Our job is to define our mission, communicate it and give our people resources to invite a friend.
#1 – Create an identity for outreach.
North America is the only continent in the world where Christianity is not growing.
½ of all churches did not see one single person come to know Christ in their churches last year.
Jesus had an outreach identity (Luke 19).
We need to pray for God’s heart for our community and develop a mission statement that reflects that heart.
We need to study our demographics.
We need to take inventory of our active member’s spiritual gifts.
We need to take an inventory of the resources that we have to use and an inventory of ministries that we have – and we need to refocus them to be bridge-building platforms into our community.
We need to research what ministries and organizations are in our community that we can partner with.
With the resources we have, we need to build short term (i.e. blood drive, food drive, Easter, Christmas, etc) and long term (after school tutoring, food banks, sermon series, etc) into our community.
We need to update our church name, logo, and communication pieces to clearly reflect our identity. Our image is the outward face of our inward identity. Our goal should be to have an image that best reflects who we are as a church.
Our community makes judgments about our church based on the image that they see.
An ‘old image’ does not clearly reflect our church’s current identity. A compelling image will increase our advertising results.
Many times people will leave our church because our image is inconsistent with the experience that they encounter.
#2 – Attract visitors by communicating your identity.
Acts 2 – the day of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit comes in the form of wind and tongues of fire, enabling those who were there to speak in languages that were unknown to them, but were known by those who had gathered there to celebrate.
This illustrates four things:
• Strategic timing.
When will there be the most interest?
There are times when people are more receptive:
o Major religious holidays… Easter and Christmas.
o Secular holidays… 4th of July, fall kick-off, Mothers/Fathers Day
o Shared cultural experiences… Black History Month, etc
• Target and receptive audience.
Who will be most interested?
o Geographic proximity: We need to keep our target and receptive audience within our geographic proximity. Miles and drive times build boundaries.
o Demographic proximity: Also remember those in demographic proximity (age, % household income, ethnicity, etc) and target specific messages to specific demographics.
o Spiritual proximity: There are generally five places people are at with spirituality: hostile, neutral, seeking, lapsed, active.
We need to target people who are neutral, seeking or lapsed and invite them to the next level, or the next step in their journey. We also need to watch the tone in which we communicate. Oftentimes we’re communicating an ‘active believer’ tone to people who are neutral, seeking or lapsed.
• Compelling message.
Why should they be interested?
We need to get people’s attention. Like in Acts 2, we need to make a big noise! We need to capture people’s interest and speak to it.
• Appropriate communication method.
How will you tell them?
o Mass Communication: TV, radio, newspaper, yellow pages, etc.
o Direct Communication: direct results. Direct mail, door hangers, etc.
o Personal Communication: e-invites, personal invitation cards, brochures, etc.
When we communicate it’s vital that all we are communicating is done through brand-building support. The some of all of us is greater if it’s consistent.
#3 – Connect attenders to your church
Acts 2:41-47: connectors in the first church were food, fellowship and small groups.
Within the first five minutes a visitor will decide if they are coming back. So much energy is put into the last 55 minutes, but it’s really the first five that are the most crucial.
Great first impressions come from:
Clear signage on the street easy parking friendly greeters
Directional signs inside children’s classrooms branding
Greeters information center clean restrooms
Professional bulletins (a new visitor will read the bulletin an average of seven times.)
We need to champion follow-up.
10% of all fist time visitor become regular attenders.
25% of all second time visitors become regular attenders.
45% of all third time visitors become regular attenders.
10 Connection Principles
1 – People connect people, programs don’t.
People don’t have a need for our church services, they need connection with people. Our services are a window for connection to happen.
2 – Create atmospheres where relationships can happen.
Have a newcomer’s lunch, a visitors reception lounge, etc.
3 – Visitors won’t initiate the process.
We have to pursue them.
4 – Newcomers need six significant relationships to stick.
5 – A meal should be a part of every assimilation process.
Visitors, newcomers, membership, etc.
6 – Everybody needs to be involved in the connection process
pastors, staff, elders, leaders
7 – There are no shortcuts to assimilation.
8 – Communicate the assimilation process everywhere.
Make it plain. Make it simple. Make it clear. Plaster it everywhere.
9 – Watch for holes and missing links. Try to close the back door.
10 – Try to easily identify your first time visitors and learn their names.
#4 – Equip your members to be inviters
Only 21% of American church goers invited people to church with them last year and of that 21%, only 2% of them were unchurched.
Make personal outreach a high priority. Create expectation for ongoing invitation of visitors.
Have members list at least 5 people they are actively praying for to attend church.
Model your invitation value as a leadership team.
Share stories publicly about those who have invited friends.
Plan special events or message series that are designed as outreach opportunities for people to invite their unchurched friends.
5 Ways to Equip our Members
1 – Provide tools
e-vites, tickets, invite cards, yard signs, etc.
2 – Create events or have guest speakers
3 – Provide personal evangelism training
4 – View your website as a tool for outreach
5 – Constantly build your brand identity to support your member’s outreach.
Luke 16:20
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