I have heard A LOT of people use absolutes – regardless of their particular area or setting – like “door to door doesn’t work anymore” or “we’ve never had any success with door to door”.  That may actually be true in some places, but most often its a case of misguided expectations.

I think a more appropriate statement would be “door to door is not the home run, save our church, launch with 500 people method of marketing that we were hoping it was”.  In other words, I think we (especially church planters) tend to try to imagine the killer app – that ONE THING that will blow the doors off.

Most of us are visionary, dreamer-type guys, but in 99% of all cases, marketing (ESPECIALLY church marketing) is not about that one thing.  It’s about raising an awareness in the community.  It’s about (at least in our case) trying to begin the process of getting those who are disconnected to reconsider – or consider for the first time – giving church a try.

One thing I learned in running my web design business for about 6 years is that no marketing venture is EVER a stand-alone activity, nor can it be viewed as such.  It always has to build.  Momentum is built within a church or organization like a snowball.  Marketing is the same way.  This event builds on the memory of that creative mailer they got a few months ago, which built on the personal invitation from that acquaintance a while back, which built on the eye-catching billboard, etc.  It’s about RAISING THE AWARENESS to gain the opportunity to introduce people to Jesus.

One way we are trying to do this is by giving people something.  This is nothing new, but we worked with a local drive-thru coffee stand (Island Bean) to put a coupon on each of our door hangers.  It was very liberating when folks were hesitant about accepting the church info to tell them about the coupon (which they can use whether or not they ever come to Iron City Church).  There was a visible lowering of the defenses when people realized that we were trying to GIVE them something.  What a novel concept!

UPDATE: RESOURCE ALERT – Ed Stetzer’s Research on Door-to-Door