[pretend there's a nice picture here, because I forgot to take one]
Today St. Silas hosted an Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ canvass. We split into five teams of two and spread out over North Liberty making contacts and informing people about the congregation. We handed out a total of 250 congregation information cards along with some OAFC materials. Special thanks to Melissa for coming out from Davenport and Jeff for coming down from Marion to help us.
In other outreach planning news, we've got some things in the works to make people more aware of St. Silas in North Liberty and invite people to receive Christ's gifts with us. We're going to be launching a new website, hopefully this month, that does a better job of giving people a feel for the congregation. We're launching Facebook and Google ads to let people know about St. Silas online. We've got some printed materials we can hand out and are planning to team up with Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca to connect with people at the end of the camp weeks this summer. We're also keeping an eye peeled for places to advertise for free or inexpensively here in North Liberty. We've got a growing list of contacts to whom we write letters and make phone calls. We offer rides to church from the Jefferson Point Apartments here in town and offered rides from the North Liberty Living Center (where we previously met), though no one took us up on them. We do continue to have a good connection there and I conduct a brief service for the residents the fourth Friday of each month. I continue to visit with contacts as people are willing. And there are other things that aren't necessarily secret, but that we're still talking about as a congregation and have not yet reached the point of being posted online.
Here's how you can help:
- If you know someone who lives in North Liberty who does not attend a congregation, ask them if you can pass their name and contact information along to us. We'll then contact them and invite them to service and visit with them if they would like. If you have already passed along contacts, remind them about the congregation. We can invite from our end, but you know these people better than we do. They'll listen to you much better than they'll listen to us.
- As we have other Ongoing Ambassador for Christ canvasses we'll make sure to publicize them. You are welcome to take part.
We'll most likely think of other things along the way and make them known to you.
All this being said, I cannot say it enough, Jesus said, "I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18). We want to deliver the Gospel to people and give them the means of grace through which Christ has promised to work, and all our outreach planning is directed toward that. But you'll notice something interesting as you consider our congregation's history. At our first service there was not one person there that I had initiated contact with or invited. Looking at those who have become members of the congregation since, very few have been because of a conscious effort on our part. This isn't to say that conscious effort shouldn't be involved, after all we're planning outreach very purposefully. But ultimately if I've learned one thing it's this: Christ gathers people to the place where his Word is faithfully believed, confessed, preached, and taught. That focus on what Jesus does permeates the congregation, not in the sense of the question "What would Jesus do?" but in the sense that Jesus is the one at work, not us. And he is constantly finding ways to remind us of that.
Continue to remember us in your prayers, that the Lord of the Harvest would make the soil good for the sowing, that he would give us boldness in proclaiming the Gospel, and especially that he would keep us steadfast in the true faith, trusting in him above all things.
In Christ
Pastor Andrew Richard
St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment