Our aim:
- To hand in person a card inviting people to our new evening church
Our strategy:
- Dress casual (less like a JW and Mormon the better)
- We gave our names and said where we were from
- Our line was, 'we're letting everyone know of a new night church that's starting in a couple of weeks. You're welcome to come along. Here's a flyer for you.' and we left it at that. No drawing people into lengthy conversations, no Gospel presentations, just telling people that something new is starting at their local church.'
- We never put flyers in letter boxes with the notice, no junk mail.
- Only 10-15% of people were rude to us
- Half of houses had no one home (when is there a good time to visit?)
- Half of the people we spoke to were indifferent, but polite. I'm guesing, for them the Church is irrelevant but not bad.
- The rest were polite and expressed vague interest. Each duo who went out seemed to have one positive contact. One Chinese lady asked me, "do you have to be religious to come to Church?" Love that question. Answer - no. In my mind I add - especially no. She then enquired as to what time Church is on.
- The younger the person, the more likely they are to take our literature
- Door knocking is not the best evangelism strategy. It may work in the USA but it is pretty ineffective in Australia. I would think we would need to hit 200-300 homes in order to find 1 person would in reality will come to church.
- To reach the community we have to try anything at our disposal.
- At least door knocking raises Mentone Baptist Church in people's consciousness.
- I am praying that some of those whom we visited, will come and visit us. In everything we do I am always reminded that it requires an act of God's grace to rouse people to consider Christ.
Yeh Boofy!
ReplyDeleteWe're doing our second lot of local area visitation at the moment. When we did it late last year one guy joined our night church (who has since invited three other people) and another family started coming to morning church (but only 6 months down the track and spasmodically).
This time we are advertising our Jesus: An Introduction course (see promo video at www.stmarks.com.au).
Our strategy is really one of profile raising and connection making and our aim is to knock on the same doors twice every year. It integrates with other elements of our strategy. So for example there was a young couple who came to church at Easter. The week after, under God's guidance I door knocked the husbands mum! Later I saw him at the shops and we were able to have a conversation about that and I was able to invite him back to church and I think we'll see them this Sunday. Visitation is not a silver bullet but one strand in a web of relationships.
Having said that on Sunday afternoon when we went out two of our guys had great gospel conversations and one talked for an hour and is taking a book back this week!
that's encouraging to hear. I like that phrase - 'visitation is not a silver bullet but one strand in a web of relationships'. Very Craig like.
ReplyDeleteTo add one other point, I think the success of door knocking depends on the demographics of the area. From experience some areas of Melbourne are more open to it than others.
I think the fact that it was members of your local church advertising your local church that helps validate doorknocking.
ReplyDeletegood stuff.