Lead Well

It’s VBS season and for many churches, the event is seen as an outreach. We want to get as many kids as possible through the door, show them the way to Jesus, and then hopefully get them to come back on Sunday. But when you put on outreach events, it’s important to realize that not everyone is seeking Jesus, not everyone is new, and not everyone is a prospect for coming to your church. This isn’t a reason not to do the event, but we need to be aware. Just as Jesus told in his parable of the Sower and the Seed, not every seed falls on fertile ground. There are three groups of people who attend your VBS (or any other outreach event for that matter) and each one has different needs, but only one will help you grow your church. In this post we'll look at each of these groups and which one needs the most focus. 1. Your Church People When you first announce your VBS or other event, the first group of people to hear about it will be the people who already attend your church. We p...

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash With Easter in just a few weeks, you’re probably deep into prep for the big weekend. Whether you’re doing an egg hunt , planning your worship set , or just getting your volunteers ready , there’s a lot of focus put on this weekend. Not to pile on, but there’s one more thing to consider for Easter. What are you doing this summer? In the past, in the weeks leading up to Easter, I put my VBS and other summer activity planning on hold. However, I realized that this was a mistake. On Easter weekend, you will have more people come to your church than on almost any other day of the year. Whether they’re guests, CEO (Christmas and Easter Only), or all your regulars, almost everyone goes to church that day. Which means that it is a great opportunity to tell them about what’s coming and how they can continue to engage with your church community. Even though many parents aren’t thinking about the summer, yet, in a few weeks they will be. You can get in on th...

Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash Maybe this has happened to you. You had a huge event where hundreds of people came. People were saved. Lives were changed. You get ready to make an announcement in the service or post on social what God has done. But you’re stuck. You can tell them what happened, but only verbally. The pictures and video are terrible or non-existent. A picture is worth a thousand words. Getting that magic shot can tell the whole story of what happened at your event. Or better, get more people to join the event next time. I’m not a photographer, but taking pictures is one of those things that I wish I’d learned in ministry school . It’s something that I’ve had to learn the hard way, and I’ve relied heavily on others who are far more skilled. When I first started, the iPhone was just released and the best phone pics I could take were so blurry, they were unusable. Thankfully, mobile phone cameras have come a long way over the last 15 years, but having a great cam...

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash One of the biggest problems we have in ministry is getting the word out. There are a lot of different methods to tell our people about the events, ministry opportunities, and lessons coming up, and there is no silver bullet that every one will engage with.  My communication philosophy is not everyone will engage with every form of communication, but everyone will engage with some form of communication. Even though there is no perfect communication tool, one my favorite and most effective methods is writing a weekly email. Sending an email is just one part of my strategy for communication I outlined in this post , but I thought I’d dive a little deeper into the process and talk about how my strategy has changed since I originally wrote that post 3 years ago.

Whether we want to admit it or not, a lot of ministry is events. Yes, we want people to know about Jesus and grow in their love for them, but how do we do that? Do we hold a class? Do we host a service? Do we put on a VBS or camp? If you think about it, all of these things are events. Oxford language dictionary defines events as “a planned public or social occasion.” This means just about everything we do in ministry is an event. Over my years in ministry, I’ve held literally hundreds of not thousands of events. The following are some things I do every time to make sure they are the best events possible.

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...