Delivering Leaflets

Using leaflets as a way of promoting a Church, or the activities of a Church has a number of benefits and challenges.

THE CHALLENGES

• Delivering leaflets through doors is boring. It is the "plod of God" with every step. You really have to believe in it.
• Delivering leaflets has almost zero obvious return benefit. The contacts made per hundred leaflets are minimal.
• Delivering leaflets costs a huge amount of time, and can cost a lot of money too if you can't design your oon and don't have access to a cheap printing firm.
  

THE BENEFITS

• Leaflets through doors are a great way of raising the "profile" of the Church in the area you leaflet. They probably won't respond directly, but they will tell the person they know from your Church that they got your leaflet.
• Leaflets are a way of reaching lots of people, personally, but not obtrusively.
• A decent flyer makes a giving a personal invitation a much easier proposition for members of your Church. Inviting someone to an event with a faded photocopied bent leaflet just does not hit the spot in 21st Century Britain. People have confidence if it looks the part.

This week we are delivering leaflets. We printed 2500 with all the community week events on and delivered 1800 through doors in our local area and other through our Church ministries and members.

Next up was 1000 Kidz Fun Day Flyers which went out via our Kidz Klub, Barneytots and Sunday morning as well as through local schools.

7,500 fairtrade day flyers were produced. These are going out through doors and in the town centre all this week.

10,000 A5 leaflets about the Church, especially focusing on our two services starting on November 8th have been produced. These are going out everywhere. The 1800 homes near our building are a start. This week we have taken four large estates int he town which have no evangelical witness whatsoever and leafleted them, for the fairtrade day and the Church. A team in the town centre has given out thousands more. We are encouraging cell groups to deliver them near where they meet and for people to use them to invite their friends to Church.

All in all, it is the scatter gun approach. Sowing seeds of information and showing that God's people do exist and are active.

Environmentally, Shrewsbury has fortnightly paper and card recycling so i am very confident the majority of those flyers will be recycled.

Economically, we use Riverside Press in Market Drayton and when 5000 full colour double sided postcards costs £90 it really does start to become accessible as a means of communicating. You cannot even photocopy them cheaper than that. They do national delivery too, tell them Dave at Barnabas in Shrewsbury recommended them.

So in the afternoons this week I have been out pacing the pavements of the estates of our town putting leaflets through people's doors. It is a thankless task. There is no meaningful response. But I know, for someone, somewhere, that leaflet could be exactly what they were looking for, and the start of their journey of faith, which makes it a very worthwhile venture, alongside all the other methods we have of making Jesus famous.

Quiz Night

Quiz Nights are fun!

They are a great, all age social event.

We had 80 questions, and 4 teams tied on 64 correct answers to share various confectionery prizes!

At our last quiz we had just over ten teams. Tonight we had 26 teams, almost all of 6 people or more.

We had set up 15 tables, and had 5 spares, and they kept coming, and coming, and coming.

We did not have another small table left in our entire church centre. Every kids table, toddler table. coffee table, you name it, we used it.

It was such a joy to see many groups of friends come. Friends from work, friends from the neighbourhood and again people from other Churches.

Our cell group had a "baking party" last night to make fresh cakes for everyone and they just about stretched to the numbers. As a group we have done this before, deciding as a group to put on a Quiz night as a way of serving the mission of the Church. It is a great way for all those in the cell to be able to support mission.

Kidz Fun Day

Our Children's fun day was a resounding success.

108 little faces were painted, which means there must have been close to 150 children there plus associated adults.

It was a hive of activity, with loads of great games and inflatables.

What hit me most though was the two blokes I shared car parking duty with. Both in their 40s, both saved and added to the Church in the last two years, both baptised, both already joining us on our mission to bless the community and make Jesus famous.

Personal faith is also being saved into the mission of God.

That is exciting!

Barnabas Unplugged

Last night's event went really, really well.

The venue was a cool music bar in the town centre. The age range was mixed and there were loads of guests, maybe 30% of the hundred or so who were there at some point during the evening.

People came and went, it got very hot, standing room only, it was almost uncomfortably busy, which meant it felt like a really edgy, busy music evening.

Musically we had everything from Green Day to Garfunkel, Snow Patrol to the Lion King.

What really thrilled me was a couple of people from other churches bringing their friends to our event, as part of their personal witness. That makes me really, really happy.

I would love the Church to once again be on the forefront of the music scene, instead of a being a niche market. Hmm, I wonder about next time.

Choosing a life partner...

I personally don't believe in a "one size fits all approach" to this issue, and some of the resources I have seen have been far to prescriptive.

However I was delighted to hear my marriage has a statistically better chance of making it.

Esther is 5 years younger than me and significantly smarter, which ticks all the boxes of that study!