Winning Ways: “Our Connection Campaign--Phase Two”

Phase One of our Connection Campaign was a wonderful success, and now we’ve begun Phase Two.

The first part of the Campaign was a huge effort to identify households within 3 miles of our church building who would be interested in visiting our church. With the help of Harvest Unlimited, we set up a “call center” where we called into our community, asking how we might be able to pray for their families and inviting them to church on our special “Connection Sunday.”

As a result, we saw about 100 visitors on October 14 from about 50 households. In addition, we had about 88 households tell us before Sunday that they could not make it on our special day but that they still expected to come for a visit. We expect to see at least 50 of those households between now and Christmas. So, as a result of our Connection Campaign, we expect over 100 new households will pass through our doors.

As I said, in order to identify these households, we did a lot of calling. We dialed 12,000 phone numbers, and actually talked with about 5,000 neighbors. About half of those already had a church home, but we found over 400 unchurched neighbors who expressed interest in coming to our church.

As we talked with our neighbors, we asked if they had any prayer requests. Over 1200 requests were given to our prayer team on the call nights. In addition, over 300 of those requests were passed along to church members who continued to pray for those needs and send encouraging notes.

Finally, last Saturday a team of “cookie callers” delivered gift bags to all the households that had indicated their plans to come to our Connection Sunday.

The first half of the Campaign was a massive project and Hillcrest did a fantastic job! The aim of that campaign phase was to identify neighbors who are interested in checking out our church.

Now the second campaign phase begins: We want to welcome all these neighbors into the life and ministry of our congregation. Among other things, this includes every member engaging visitors in conversation on Sundays and inviting them to our small-group Bible study (either Common Ground or Sunday School).

All our work in the first phase of the campaign was simply to get us to this point: We want our new guests to hear your warm and welcoming invitation into the life and ministry of Hillcrest!
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