Your church guests are your best prospects. But most come multiple times before making a move for God. So encouraging their return is a key aspect of growth.
One way to keep people thinking about your church and your upcoming events is to send them something in the mail each month. To this end, consider designing your own monthly church magazine.
Before you balk at the cost and effort this would take, consider this approach – which has the look of a mini-magazine but is actually an expanded church bulletin. This mini-magazine consists of two sheets of standard photocopy paper folded in half and saddle-stapled in the middle. This creates a little eight-page magazine. The cover and back can be full-color with the inside pages in black and white with lots of photos and short articles. Effort should be taken to make it attractive and interesting. You should send it each month to your entire guest and prospect mailing list.
Over time, it’s not unusual to have a mailing list in the thousands. If someone visits your church for any reason – church services, socials, etc. – they should begin getting your monthly bulletin. Flyers and invitational brochures are fine, but if you send them every month they quickly lose their effect and are often tossed in the trash without a second thought. This mini-magazine is different. It’s short, interesting, and packed full of photos and great articles.
A publication like this can be easily put together by a small team using a computer and a design program like Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign. They write the articles and take the photos. Printing is done at a local copy shop. Cost for printing and postage is reasonable, considering you are reaching your best prospects.
Content is standardized every month. The cover masthead is your church name and logo. Under that is a flyer promoting your next big activity. The inside cover is the pastor’s page – a short article dealing with current events in light of Scripture.
The next page contains photos of a recent church event with a title and short description. This page says that we have lots of church family fun and we sure wish you could have been there. The fourth page is a testimony from someone that has been healed or perhaps a conversion story. Include several photos and a short write-up about how their life has been changed by the power of God. Next is church news – a short description of five or six upcoming activities. Add some good clipart so the page is not all words. Page six is the most read – jokes, humor and a church comic or two. If for no other reason, this page gets them to open it up.
Page seven is a short devotion that addresses a key aspect of salvation and Christian living. Always choose a good title to encourage reading. Finally, the back cover is a calendar with all church events typed into the squares. Then below that, put your mailer section that includes the return address, mailing label and bulk-rate box. Eight little pages, 8 ½ by 5 ½ in size, saddle-stapled in the middle with a wafer seal on the edge. This little church magazine can do a massive amount of evangelism and is worth every penny.
