deep roots

Normally, I write encouraging posts about life, ministry, or being a wife or mom. But lately we've had a season of outreach, so I wanted to share what we've done.

We are small, with only a few people, but God is shaking up our resources and giving us creative ideas, and we are seeing new people find Jesus each week!

Our city has a great downtown cultural area. It usually draws students from Georgia College & State University, since the university is in the heart of downtown. A few weeks ago, the city had a great festival called "Deep Roots". If ya'll could smell the bbq, your mouths would be watering. Music, crafts - I loved it all!!

We knew we wanted our church to be right in the middle of this great opportunity to reach out to more than 15,000 people. What a chance! We didn't want to just pass out flyers and say "come to our church". We wanted to create a fun atmosphere where people could really make a memory.

So we created a state of the art (ok, not really) photo booth! It was so fun!!! We hung black shower curtains from the top of our tent. Shower curtains because they are thicker and heavier then regular curtains and here in Georgia it can get a bit windy. We bought fun props and raided our kids' toys. Two stools went in front of the black curtain.

We also created a video (http://familyroomonline.org/familyroom/enter_site.html) to play on a flat screen while people walked by.

We had a huge bucket of silly bands which kids could have for free. Then we gave out a card for them to go to the website to get their photos, and got their email to send them pictures. They all signed by their email address to give us permission to post their photos to the web. (Permission and privacy is a BIG detail when working with people and the internet.)

We had an amazing response, and so much fun!!! We were also able to activate 20 new volunteers from our church that day! Watching them love people and have fun was so awesome! So many great conversations -- and several have come to church the last two weekends!

Here is the cost breakdown so you can see how we spent just a little to connect with 15.000 people:

$275 - Space @ Festival
$225 - Props/business cards/video/silly bands
$500 - Total Cost

And the REALLY awesome part? We sent a letter to friends and family, sharing our vision for the festival and two people donated $250. In the end, this event cost us nothing but time and love.

What can you do in your city to go deep and dig some roots in the heart of people around your church?

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