WACO, Texas—The Waco congregation reached out to the neighborhood around their meeting hall Oct. 25 with hot dogs and games.
The congregation has been meeting for more than three years in a rented building on the grounds of a city park. Next door to the park is a neighborhood of about 500 homes. In the past, we have invited the residents to join us for a music concert and to hear a guest speaker from Voice of the Martyrs. We’ve had a total of maybe 10 people respond to our invitations, with none of them coming back for a second visit.
This time, we provided a more direct service to the neighborhood families—not involving them coming to the church building. We placed 300 flyers on the home doorknobs touting an afternoon picnic with free food and lots of games for the kids. Our small church of mostly older members pitched in with decorations, homemade desserts, grilled hot dogs and all the fixings, and plenty of fun games and prizes.
This time, 45 visitors showed up! Although our door flyers had advertised that the event was sponsored by our church, we didn’t purposely bring up the church connection unless people asked who we were. Our purpose was to serve the neighborhood families and begin to create relationships and trust. The event was a major morale-booster for our members. Lee Berger.
Copyright © Grace Communion International, 2004