I continue to be amazed at the growth in our children’s and youth ministry. We shattered our church’s previous records for VBS this year with 185 unique children coming through our doors. (Take that word “unique” however you want). We continue to see around 150 kids on Wednesday evenings as well. One of the reasons I am amazed to see this is that we do zero church advertising for our children’s and youth ministry. And I intend to keep it this way.
Okay maybe zero is a bit of an overstatement. We do have the occasional time when we will put out information on social media about various events we are having. We will on occasion pass out fliers to a block party that we are having somewhere in the community. But we don’t take out ads in papers, we don’t spend money on mailings, or any of that stuff. Our church advertising budget for the whole year is $300, and we could probably get away with less.
Church Advertising is Overrated
Full disclosure, though. If you are familiar with my writing ministry you know that I’m not very good at self-promotion. I stink at it. I don’t do all those things you are supposed to do in order to get people to your blog. At times I question this. I believe my writing ministry could go further if I was a bit better about self-promotion (and maybe a better writer). But I actually think our lack of advertising and promotion is a good thing for our church. Let me explain.
First, this forces us to grow by word of mouth. I come from the Steve Martin school of success. Martin tells young comedians to “be so good they can’t ignore you.” I try to do that same thing with writing and I also as a church. Of course I mean different things than Steve Martin when I say, “be so good.” I don’t mean “put on such an excellent show that they come back”. What I mean is that you love people so deeply and faithfully proclaim Christ so passionately that you won’t be ignored.
