7 Easy Outreach Ideas To Share The Gospel
By Bob Steinkamp
1. Messages to Go:
By simply providing sermons on CD, DVD and/or Tape after the service you will see your church grow both spiritually and numerically!
“We started making recordings of our sermons available after the service. As a result, our church tripled in size in just 2 years! We went from 25 people to more than 75 people! Thirty of these people were new salvation! Recorded messages really work! We know that this is what brings people into the church!”
– Pastor Maurice Carney (VA
2. Fish for men cast your net in a fish bowl!
Who would have guessed that a simple fish bowl would become one of our most effective outreach tools! Try putting a fish bowl filled with Gospel messages in laundromats, restaurants, and other businesses in your community
Six truck drivers distribute 4,000 recorded messages a month all over the United States for Ozark Full Gospel Church. Several times these recorded messages have been the catalyst to restore discouraged truck drivers back to spiritual health and propel them to serve the Lord as preachers.
3. Door Hanger Community Outreach
What an easy and fun way to invite people to your church service or special event! Having a movie night at your church? Add a bag of microwave popcorn and a ticket for “free admission” in your door hanger bag along with your audio message.
Pastor James Eakins of Missouri shares, “The one thing that helped our church more than anything, was when we started ‘Operation Saturation. This is when the church gathers every Thursday to put CDs and cassettes in door hanger bags and then goes out to leave them on doors in their city and surrounding towns. They distribute 3,000 recorded salvation messages a month with ‘Operation Saturation: In this way, they saturate the area with the Word of God! Pastor Eakins reports, “We have found this to be very effective and many visitors come to our church because of this.”
Pastor John Boyce of Pennsylvania gives a pack of light bulbs along with an audio testimony. On the pack of light bulbs it says, “Need a light? We hope this small gift brightens your day.” Its a simple way of saying God loves you, no strings attached…
4. Everyone has a God story
Why not share it? What’s a God story? It’s your testimony of what God has done in your life. It can be your story of Salvation or another significant event where God impacted your life. Sharing audio or video copies of these stories are powerful tools to reach the lost!
Dr. Steve Eremich (Dr. E) is the Pastor at Lake Anna Bible Church in Ohio. He asked church members to record their personal testimony on Tape and CD to share with others. Dr. E led the way by recording his testimony on CD, and shared how Jesus rescued him from alcoholism. He included an invitation to church and to pray the sinner’s prayer.
Dr. E prayed, “Lord, show me specifically who is the first person I should give a message to.” He says, “Just like that the Lord showed me, its the young man who works at the grocery store, the one I always chat with about sports!”
Dr. Eremich shared a CD of that message with the young man named Justin at the grocery store. Two days later, he asked Justin what he thought about the CD. Justin shared this: “Powerful! Awesome! I prayed that sinner’s prayer with you!” Dr. E had the exciting opportunity to help this young man grow in the Lord!
My daughter Rachael and my son Jonathan have recently been working on a God Stories project. Jonathan has been doing video recordings of people’s testimonies and stories of what God has done for them to share at local churches. Rachael shares a 3 to 5 minute God Story DVD each week at the church we attend. But she has also been sending the DVDs to other local churches. My wife Juanita advertises in our local newspapers and tells which churches will be showing the God Story DVDs. Rachael thought this might be a good way to get people who don’t normally go to church to visit one of our local churches.
It’s had an impact. Not long ago Rachael sat down in church and a woman she had never seen before came in and sat next to her. She said to Rachael, “I hear we’re going to see a video about a man named Bob who had a kidney failure.” She was looking forward to hearing his story. She had no idea that Rachael was involved in the outreach!
5. DVD Outreach
Each year, millions of Americans ock to theaters for the latest in movie entertainment. Giving away Gospel messages in DVD format with catchy titles and packaging related to a current movie is easy and fun outreach that anyone can do.
Mike Deckman of Pennsylvania shared a story about a shy young man who was able to share his faith with recorded messages during a movie outreach
“We had an opportunity to do an outreach with this movie that was in theaters – to hand out a DVD that gave a gospel presentation that really piggy-backed what they just saw in the movie theater. A guy named Josh said, ‘Hey, you know I don’t do a whole lot during the week. I can be there the whole week if you want. You just let me know and I’ll come and hand out DVDs.’ and this is one of the most introverted kids that I had ever met.
But he had no problem standing out there at the movie theater handing out these DVDs because it was so simple. It was something that you just passed out and said, ‘Hey, here’s your DVD.’ I remember on the car ride home afterward he said ‘You know that was pretty easy,’ and I said ‘Yeah this is pretty easy, you did a good job today, and I’m proud of you.’ It just goes to show you that with CDs, DVDs and Tapes, it’s one of the easiest ways to reach out to people.
It’s a very dynamic and exciting outreach, and it’s so simple to do that even the ones that are very timid and very uncomfortable with talking to people about Christ can easily take a CD or DVD or Tape, give it to someone, and say, ‘Here you go.’ ” – Mike Deckman (PA)
6. Special Visitor’s Package!
Record a special DVD or audio message to give to first time visitors to your church telling them how glad you are that they came. Include a schedule of events, information on special ministries, and other activities that they may not know about by attending a service. Your visitors won’t forget that you made them feel welcome!
St. John Baptist Church of Savannah lets visitors choose a welcome packet with a DVD or CD in it. One young lady had visited the church a few times. When she was out of town, she decided to watch a service on the Internet. God used this service to motivate her to give her life to Christ! Now she regularly attends the church. Most importantly, she is a follower of Christ!
7. Message Share
If you’re like most churches, 1/3 of your congregation is missing your service every week Imagine your congregation having access to an audio message of the service they missed anywhere they can access the Internet! Kingdom developed Message Share” as a simple solution to sharing your audio messages online. Sending a message for a friend to hear is easy, too!
Bob Steinkamp of Rejoice Ministries, Inc. in Florida shared the following. “This morning I was editing one of my wife’s Charlyne’s Monday night teaching tapes. On it she made a comment about why prodigal spouses come and go from their homes. It was something she had never before shared in this way.
I grabbed the clip, made an MP3 file, uploaded it to Message Share, sent out a special to 7,400 ‘Charlyne Cares’ subscribers about it, and the hits began. Specials like this keep our hurting people going. In less than half an hour, this audio clip went from my computer to reaching people around the world. This is difficult for me to comprehend.
In the pre-Internet days, I could have heard this and written it down for us to use in a print newsletter. In about a month or six weeks, it would appear in print, minus my wife’s enthusiastic tone, and be read by a handful of people, after we had paid for printing and postage. God has certainly blessed His church and us as a ministry, with technology.”
This article “7 Easy Outreach Ideas to share the Gospel!” was written by: Bob Steinkamp. From.www.kingdomtapes.com web site. March 2009
