How do You Measure the Success of a Church Outreach Event?

ministry communication
How do You Measure the
Success of a Church Outreach Event
Yvon Prehn - yvonprehn@aol.com
I
recently looked at a church website that celebrated the success
of their fall outreach by sharing the number of hot
dogs served and bags of candy given away. Although I understand
they were celebrating that they had a great turnout for
their event, a great turnout alone does not make for a successful
church event, especially if its intended purpose was outreach.
Read on for suggestions how to honestly measure the significant
spiritual impact of your event.
A great turnout doesn’t equal great results
If you just do the minimum in advertising, it’s difficult
not to get a great turnout when you are giving away
free food and candy.
The true measure of success in a holiday church
outreach event is not if the staff feels good about it after
the event. Respectfully speaking, our personal feelings
about how well we did and whether we liked the event
or not, are neither valid nor useful evaluation tools, if
we are trying to win our world for Jesus.
It might help (this will sound heartless to some of
you and I apologize, but we must be more effective on
winning our world for Jesus), if we think about what
measures success in other areas and then apply it to our
outreach ministries. For example, what makes for a successful
basketball game isn’t opinion, it’s the score.
Consider the same system in evaluating your
church events. In my ministry I define effective and
successful church communications as those that fully
fulfill the Great Commission. The measure of success
then would be whether this goal is being fulfilled or not.
Just like in basketball—you look at the score.
Christian Computing® Magazine
The score in fully fulfilling the Great Commission has
two parts:
1. That people come to know Jesus as Savior
2. That they grow to maturity in their faith and become
disciples
Let’s get real and honest in our evaluation
Effective church communication involves much
more than who thinks they are right and who doesn’t. It
matters much more than who likes what or who is not
wanting to change a way they’ve “always done” something.
It also means you don’t change things or do away
with something because somebody went to a different
church that did this or that.
You look at lives. You look at behavior.
Are they changing or not as a result of your communications
Keeping score starts with simple counting
This is not rocket science. Score-keeping in church
communications is determined first of all by attendance,
the simple numbers of people that respond (or didn’t)
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after you created and distributed your communications.
The score is determined by asking questions such
as these and tracking the answers for each one:
Did you do a mailing Send a postcard An email
Web announcement Pulpit announcement Twitter or
Facebook entries How many, how often
Did you equip your people with communication tools
Connection cards, postcards, website links
Then evaluate response:
How many people attended the event How many of
them were new to the church
The simple numbers of how many new people
attend the church, why and what brought them there
are important because you cannot start the road toward
sharing the message of salvation without people first
getting inside the church and becoming part of the
process. Whether your church accepts individuals as believers
with a simple confession of faith after one visit
or whether becoming a Christian is defined by a series
of explorations and classes, followed by a decision and
baptism, or any combination of these events, whatever
your tradition, it must start with simple attendance.
can’t honestly point to anyone who is now attending or
who has come to know Jesus because of it,” you then
have two choices:
1. You can learn to communicate more effectively.
My book, The Five Steps of Effective Church
Communication and Marketing available at
www.lulu.com/yvonprehn and my website,
www.effectivechurchcom.com give you lots of ways
to do this so that your holiday events will yield measurable
results in the future.
Or
2. Quit spending all that money to entertain yourselves
and give it either to a mission group or church that is
successful in outreach or give it to feed hungry children.
My website: www.effectivechurchcom.com has
additional information on how to follow up after an
event, plus on my www.lulu.com/yvonprehn site there
is a FREE download of Christmas materials including
a ready-to-print gospel presentation you can give to
guests who attend your Christmas events.
Evaluate the results honestly
f you put on a Christmas outreach event and you
spend thousands of dollars, what was your return on investment
How many are now attending
the church because of the event
How many have become Christians
because of the event How many have
started on the process of becoming a
Christian because of the event
I suspect far too many churches
do Christmas and other holiday events
because the people currently attending
the church really like to put on
the events. To determine if this is the
primary motivation—track the results.
To repeat: how many new people are
now attending the church because of
the event How many have become
Christians because of the event
Resources from Yvon Prehn to enable you to
create effective church communications
If you aren’t tracking event costs
and results – Why aren’t you
If you know the answer is something
along the lines of “We didn’t do
a very good job of communicating it
to people outside the church and we
available at www.lulu.com/yvonprehn
Christian Computing® Magazine December 200933