The signs are everywhere.  OK, they will be soon.  Just tonight I finished ordering all the signs we’ll have for our first monthly service next Sunday (May 20).  I had the chance to work in the sign business for a couple of years before being called to vocational ministry.

 It blows my mind how much time, energy, effort and money that people will put into their business (or their church) and then get upset because they have to pay for signage.  Like most all forms of marketing, signs aren’t the killer app — they’re part of the cost of doing business and contribute to your brand awareness.

Combine my experience with the sign business & design industry with the fact that I tend to be a perfectionist and ordering signs is a painstaking process for me.  I am trying to learn to “pull the trigger” – that’s what Dad calls it – instead of engaging in the paralysis of analysis.  Deep breath…. OK, signs have been ordered.

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

OVERWHELMED:
When I laid my head down last night I was asking God to bring out about 12-15 people to join us today for hanging door hangers in the neighborhood here. 

God is so good that He decided today would be a good day to remind me that He is bigger than my best reasoning!

All told, we had 27 people show up (counting the kids) and leg it out, scattering seeds to raise the community consciousness about Iron City Church – all on 3 or 4 days notice.  All told, we placed info on the doors of between 2,000 and 2,500 homes today!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED TODAY AND THANK YOU GOD FOR THE REMINDER OF WHO’S IN CHARGE!!!

EXHAUSTED:
This area is known as the North Hills.  Driving around every day, I tend to think of that as an attractive, convenient name to identify where I live and where we’re planting a new church.  Today however, walking the 2-3 miles that I did, reminded me that its not just a clever name.  It’s called the North Hills because it’s in the HILLS!  My feet, ankles, calves, knees, quads and hips hurt like the 3rd day of football camp.  God please forgive me for my sedentary lifestyle….