A couple of weeks ago, I shared a post with 3 tips for reaching out during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. However, it’s also important to follow up with those who attended or were served by your events or service projects.
Many churches held some sort of fall festival or “trunk or treat” over Halloween weekend. So it’s possible you already have in hand contact cards from that event. If so, now is a great time to think through how you’ll follow up with the folks who attended.
1. Phone call, note, or personal visit
This is, perhaps, the simplest of follow-up strategies. If you have a large number of people who attended an event, such as a Fall Festival or vacation Bible school, you might consider splitting them up among the church members who volunteered at the event. This would take the burden of follow-up off of church staff or children’s ministry volunteers alone.
A simple phone call, note or visit saying, “Thank you for attending our event. Is there any way we can pray for you?” can go a long way in remaining connected with folks throughout the year.
2. Invitation to an upcoming event
The great thing about November and December is there are so many opportunities to connect with folks! If your congregation hosts a church-wide Thanksgiving meal, invite folks who attended VBS or a Fall Festival (with an RSVP request, of course, so you’re not overwhelmed with folks you didn’t expect).
As you follow up with those who attended previous events, you may discover needs your church can meet during Thanksgiving and Christmas, through food boxes or by buying gifts for a family or two (more on those in the previous post I mentioned at the beginning).
3. Don’t forget to share the gospel!
You may have included a gospel tract in bags you handed out during Fall Festival. If that’s the case, you can follow up by asking if they’ve had a chance to look it over. I’d suggest training your follow-up volunteers to share a quick gospel presentation based on that tract, or another simple tool like the 3 Circles.
After all, the whole reason we do outreach events is so we might reach out to our community with the gospel! Sometimes, we can get so focused on upcoming events and weekly ministry activity that we forget to make sure we are clearly presenting the gospel to those who come to our events.
Do you have some other creative outreach or follow-up ideas? Share them on our social media channels!
facebook.com/churchreplanters and twitter.com/churchreplanter.
Published November 5, 2021
