Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

Our church is located in the west Chicago suburbs (Lombard Assembly), and we will be hosting our first (and hopefully annual) Back to School Blast on August 15th.

Our event will include free school supplies (donated by our church members since late spring), a carnival (carnival games, inflatable bounce house, dunk tank, face painting, etc), and puppet shows put on by a couple in our church who run an awesome puppet ministry. We will also be doing a lot of giveaways for free haircuts and shoes, sponsored by local businesses in our community.

First, think of you rministry as reach out instead of outreach because the inside "Body of Christ" should be reaching out.

Second, work with your school district to adopt a school or class if you have enough in your "reach-out" ministry. The adoption should be for an entire school year instead of one day or event resulting in an Godly influential presence in the community. The reach-out person will serve in the capacity needed to ensure that the students, faculty, and staff have a successful school year.

Third, host a fun and food-filled event at one of the high school stadiums or even in a larger venue on the school property immediately following a football scrimmage. Partner with a television and or radio station to have them make the request for the community to bring in a book bag and school supplies. Hand out book bags filled with school supplies to every student at the event.

In conclusion, tit is important to show the community (lost and saved) that the Body of Christ is willing to serve in the community as quickly they are to be of service inside of a church building.

We host a Back 2 School Rally each year. We focus on the local elementary schools (there are 3 - totalling more than 2000 kids), and gather as much community and local business support as possible. We coordinate the event to be immediately following the schools' registration weeks. We have been able to partner with the schools and provide volunteers for their registration week each year - and they have also allowed us to distribute flyers advertising the event at that registration week (directly to students and parents). We have been able (on a budget of about $1500) to pull off a more than $13,000 event because of the generosity and support of local businesses and organizations. We distributed 1000 backpacks filled with supplies, gave 120 free haircuts (we had 12 stylists work the entire 2 hours), 40+ door prizes (including a brand new laptop), and a ton of other fun stuff.

The most important part of the event is that we had about 20 volunteers whose sole responsibility was to greet and talk with people in order to be able to share the Gospel. We also had a live band and a presentation of the Gospel from the stage near the end of the event (prior to giving out the laptop).

It has been a tremendously successful event for us - and has afforded us an opportunity to establish and foster a relationship with the city, the schools and the families of our community. Most of all, it has given us a reputation of a church that loves people.

The goal of the event is to Love people, Meet needs and (most importantly) Share Jesus.