Wilson L. Deaton
28th February 2006, 08:53 PM (20:53)
Our "Special Events Planning Team" has been dissatisfied with our results at our special events when we encourage our people to invite their friends and neighbors. At the same time we also have been feeling we need to do a better job of serving our community. As a result of those two factors we came up with a new plan (new to us but not all that profound).
First, we wanted to have a winter bowling party so we decided instead of just having an all-church bowling party and letting people invite friends that we would choose a "group" and extend them an official invitation as a group. We first decided to contact our local Big Brothers/Big Sisters and tell them that we would host 10 of their matches (20 people) for a bowling outing. We would pay for their bowling and their shoe rentals and buy them a soda. Turned out Big Brothers/Big Sisters already had a bowling outting scheduled for the day we had chosen. That meant they weren't interested and we had to change the date to get the bowling lanes we needed. We then called our local temporary shelter for abused familes and pitched the offer to them. They said that their clients were too transient. They might have 20 today and 2 next weekend. Therefore they didn't want to have us reserve spots for them. This was getting discouraging.... Finally, today, I got a call from our guy making the contacts who said he is awaiting final confirmation but it looks like we will be hosting 20 people (10 adults, 10 kids) connected to our local foster parenting agency. Our event is this Saturday. We will disburse our church family amongst them and treat them to this special outting and (probably) give them a little brochure explaining that we are simply trying to live out our church's motto: "Serving others for Jesus' sake!"
In the future, our Women's Enrichment Ministries will be contacting CareNet (our local crisis pregnancy center) and offer to host a baby shower for one of their recent or soon to be moms. We'll cover the party expenses and have some of our ladies attend (and bring gifts) and also provide the mom with some invitations to invite her family and/or friends. Hopefully, the mix will be about half from our church and half unchurched.
We also wanted to have an indoor luau. We decided that instead of "having" one for ourselves, we would "host" one for the neighborhood around the school where we worship. We will have it on the day before Palm Sunday. We'll have an ONU group there to sing two or three songs and tell everyone they will be singing again in worship the next day.
Please pray for us as we try to serve and influence our community for Christ.
Wilson
First, we wanted to have a winter bowling party so we decided instead of just having an all-church bowling party and letting people invite friends that we would choose a "group" and extend them an official invitation as a group. We first decided to contact our local Big Brothers/Big Sisters and tell them that we would host 10 of their matches (20 people) for a bowling outing. We would pay for their bowling and their shoe rentals and buy them a soda. Turned out Big Brothers/Big Sisters already had a bowling outting scheduled for the day we had chosen. That meant they weren't interested and we had to change the date to get the bowling lanes we needed. We then called our local temporary shelter for abused familes and pitched the offer to them. They said that their clients were too transient. They might have 20 today and 2 next weekend. Therefore they didn't want to have us reserve spots for them. This was getting discouraging.... Finally, today, I got a call from our guy making the contacts who said he is awaiting final confirmation but it looks like we will be hosting 20 people (10 adults, 10 kids) connected to our local foster parenting agency. Our event is this Saturday. We will disburse our church family amongst them and treat them to this special outting and (probably) give them a little brochure explaining that we are simply trying to live out our church's motto: "Serving others for Jesus' sake!"
In the future, our Women's Enrichment Ministries will be contacting CareNet (our local crisis pregnancy center) and offer to host a baby shower for one of their recent or soon to be moms. We'll cover the party expenses and have some of our ladies attend (and bring gifts) and also provide the mom with some invitations to invite her family and/or friends. Hopefully, the mix will be about half from our church and half unchurched.
We also wanted to have an indoor luau. We decided that instead of "having" one for ourselves, we would "host" one for the neighborhood around the school where we worship. We will have it on the day before Palm Sunday. We'll have an ONU group there to sing two or three songs and tell everyone they will be singing again in worship the next day.
Please pray for us as we try to serve and influence our community for Christ.
Wilson