30-Minutes-a-Month Care
Our church struggled to provide timely ministry to its members. People moved, entered the hospital, lost jobs, or even died-and sometimes the church didn’t find out about it for weeks or even months.
In response, we started “InReach Care Ministry.” We recruit people to oversee a maximum of five families. Their responsibilities include one phone call per month; cards sent on birthdays, anniversaries, and special holidays; and two invitations to church social events each year. The responsibility takes about thirty minutes a month. The church provides the cards and the postage stamps.
For recruits, we began with the chairman of deacons, who is now responsible for the full-time church staff. Each full-time staff member is also responsible for five families. A staff member monitors changes in assignments and posts them weekly.
When there is an illness, death, or emergency, the church is typically notified by the InReach minister. Numerous members report they are being contacted for the first time since they joined the church.
Larry L. Howard Edmundson Road Baptist Church St. Louis, Missouri
Cookies and Coffee
To follow up visitors to our worship service, our church began a cookie delivery on Sunday afternoons. About 2 p.m., a church member drives to the home of the visitor, delivers homemade cookies and a visitor packet, and invites the visitor back to church. The following week, a different church member sends or delivers a note and a coffee mug bearing the church name.
Don A. Stowell Calvary Christian Church Swartz Creek, Michigan
Carol Announcement
Schedule a night of caroling a week before your special Christmas service or cantata to invite people to it. At each home, after caroling, present candy canes. On the candy canes tape a tag: on one side, write a verse (Isa. 9:6, Luke 2:10-11, or John 3:16); on the other side, write an invitation to your church’s Christmas service, including the church’s phone number. Afterward, meet at a church member’s home to pray for the people to whom you’ve given invitations.
Sue Kline Discipleship Journal’s 101 Best Small-Group Ideas
The Gift Rap
Churches often send Christmas gifts to missionaries, but sometimes missionaries’ college-age children are overlooked. Not at Bethel Evangelical Free Church on Staten Island, New York. for the past several years, a portion of the special missionary Christmas offering has been sent to the half dozen MKs (missionary kids) attending colleges in the United States. Each student receives a $10 gift certificate for a telephone call to Mom and Dad. “We let them know we care,” says Pastor Robert De Ritter. “The gifts help bridge the distance, and it’s appreciated at both ends of the line.”
Fresh Ideas for Preaching, Worship & Evangelism
Nursery Pagers
Since our church uses temporary facilities, we are unable to use the “will call” system to alert parents to problems in the nursery. Instead, our nursery workers give parents a beeper to wear and set it on the vibration mode. When a child cannot be consoled, the nursery worker calls the beeper, and the parent comes to the nursery. The cost of each beeper is about $8.80 per month. In order to keep the cost down, parents who own beepers are asked to bring them to church and register their beeper number with the nursery worker.
Bill Calvin Christ Our Friend Community Church Omaha, Nebraska
Becky Ashby Westside Baptist Church Omaha, Nebraska
A more interactive Ideas That Work
Each “Ideas That Work” will address a specific question. Then, in the following issue, we’ll publish the best responses. This time the question is: What creative ideas have you used to help visitors feel welcome? We’ll pay up to $50 for accepted items of about 150 words. Contact Us or write to:
Leadership Ideas That Work 465 Gundersen Drive Carol Stream, IL 60188
Carol Announcement adapted with permission of NavPress.
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP, journal.
Last Updated: October 7, 1996
