Lead Well

I recently saw a post asking what children’s pastors do to get kids to their VBS. COVID has changed a lot of things, and this summer will be telling if these strategies will still have as much effectiveness, but I know pre-COVID, my VBS continued to grow, and I saw more and different kids every year. If you want to reach more kids with the Gospel, you need to tell people what you're doing regardless of whether your VBS in-person, online, in the neighborhood, or something else.   With that said,  Here are my 7 steps to market VBS. 1. Build a contact list Whether you’ve done VBS in the past or this is your church’s first time, you have to have a contact list to begin. The contact information should include the kids’ names and ages, their email, their physical address, and their phone number. If this is your first VBS, your church database should have all this information of the kids in your ministry. Every year, I add to my contact list the new kids who are current...

Easter is the Super Bowl of Christendom. More people come to church on Easter than any other Sunday of the year. I know last year’s Easter was different than any in recent memory, but now with churches opening up again, and others, like mine in Florida have been open for a while, we’re looking to see the people to come back maybe for the first time in over a year. Looking at 2019’s stats, my ministry doubled in size for that one Sunday. But with all these new people how do we get them to come back? How do we connect them to our church? COVID accelerated a lot of things and one thing I believe it really sped up was the need for community. People are longing for human connection more than a fancy service, great music, or a remarkable guest experience. Don’t get me wrong, we still need those things, but we have to connect them to a community. It’s the people that will get them to come back. I am a children’s pastor, so this follow up plan will have elements specific to that ministry...