Outreach tip

We'll come back to the discussion of Islam and the West in the next post, but for today, just a little outreach tip that I have found useful.

As Christians meeting new people each day, we often struggle to know how to most effectively fulfill the Great Commission. With many people, we have very limited contact, and often it is a one time contact. We may identify with Christ, or even state some portion of the gospel message, but we then have no opportunity for follow-up and the other person has no way of knowing how to get in touch with us. The awkward thing in these situations is to invite the person without taking a lot of time and, for example, holding up the people behind us in line at the check-out register while we invite the cashier and write down the time, place, and contact information. Because of these external pressures, we typically move on without going to all the trouble. In such circumstances, it would be really nice to have a personalized invitation for further discussion plus information on when and where our home church is meeting.

I have found that there are business card companies (I use VistaPrint) who will give you 250 free business cards for the cost of shipping and handling ($5.25 in this case). They put a line of text advertising their product on the back of the card, but it’s worth the getting the cards for free. You are required to use one of their templates, but you can put whatever you want on the card. So, you can put your name, plus a personal e-mail address (start a separate gmail/hotmail/yahoo account for this purpose if you are worried about spam, etc.), and/or phone number, along with your church name, location, time of service, phone number, web site or whatever might be most effective in your particular case. Obviously, you need to be very comfortable with having the contact information you publish in the hands of near-strangers. I’ve ordered cards a couple of times now, so it doesn’t appear that they mind if you place multiple orders over time.

I think the beauty of it is that it is a personal invitation to talk further personally or come to church, rather than just a generic information card the church produces. Perhaps you will find the idea useful.