February 3, 2003
Prospects found with online help
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___ARLINGTON--When Glen and Vicki Goodson arrived at Pleasant Union Baptist Church near Edgewood, Sunday School attendance was 19, and the church had no known prospects.
___Goodson, a bivocational pastor, and his wife began to drive the country roads around the church in the evenings. They noticed bicycles, tricycles, wagons and other signs of bustling families.
___Yet the church nursery sat unused on Sundays.
___The couple determined they needed a simple tool to identify prospects for the church.
___They found it online at www.ChurchLifeResources.com, a ministry of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The BGCT-managed website houses hundreds of resources for church leaders, organized around 11 characteristics of healthy churches. Many
___The site also includes a church health survey to determine a church's strengths and weaknesses. After completing the survey, church leaders are directed to related online resources to address weaknesses.
___One of the resources the Goodsons found online is the Prospect Discovery system written by Ed Hale, director of the BGCT's Church and Membership Resourcing Center.
___The East Texas pastor downloaded a few pages of simple instructions, along with pre-formatted materials that could be adapted for use in his church's context.
___The idea behind the Prospect Discovery system is to prepare a simple survey that church volunteers then take to each home in a designated area. Surveyors go to the door, present a small packet of information including the survey and explain that they'll be back by in 30 to 45 minutes to pick up completed surveys. Residents are asked simply to leave the completed card on their front door using a rubber band that is supplied.
___After surveyors distribute all their packets, they return to the starting point and begin to collect responses. They do not attempt to engage people in conversation at this point. Rather, they collect the written information from those who are willing to give it.
___In addition to basic information about who lives in the home, the survey card asks for interest in church programs such as concerts, age-graded Bible study, sports, camps, Vacation Bible School, women's Bible studies, youth events, parenting seminars and marriage enrichment classes.
___The completed survey cards are taken back to the church, where they are sorted and prepared for follow-up visits by teams who have been trained for this purpose.
___At Pleasant Union, the Goodsons and church volunteers surveyed 110 homes and got 15 cards returned. Mrs. Goodson said she was disappointed in that return rate at first.
___But then she realized those 15 cards contained the names of 50 prospects. That was more than twice the number of regular attenders the church had at the time.
___The next Sunday, three couples who had been surveyed showed up for worship as a direct result of the outreach effort.
___After more follow-up work, Mrs. Goodson enlisted 15 women for a women's Bible study--12 of whom were prospects for the church. Soon, three of those women made professions of faith in Jesus Christ and were baptized. Then, their husbands were baptized.
___The Pleasant Union survey was done shortly before Vacation Bible School. As a result of the outreach, the church of 19 people drew 81 children for VBS.
___The survey also helped launch a children's choir program at the rural church.
___Eight months later, the church averages 80 in Sunday School and up to 100 in worship attendance. And people still show up who said they came because of the survey.
___The Prospect Discovery system is "one of the easiest ways to find prospects" for any church, Hale explained at the Texas Evangelism Conference Jan. 28. He has used the system in churches large and small, in rural and urban settings.
___The system is ideal for involving both youth and adults in outreach, he explained.
___This approach applies pressure to no one, he said, but collects information from those who are willing to give it.
___And it sends an important message to the community, he added: "You want the community to know you offer things of interest to them."
___The seeds sown through this outreach may last longer than expected, Hale also said.
___He recalled one church he served as minister of education where youth performed the Prospect Discovery survey. Months later, a family came to visit the church. When asked how they knew about the church, the visitors replied they had just moved into the neighborhood, and their neighbors were Catholic.
___The Catholic neighbors had been so impressed by the youth group's effort to go out into the community that they had kept the information about the church that was distributed with the survey. Then they recommended the Baptist church to their new neighbors.
___The Prospect Discovery system and other similar resources are available at no cost at www.ChurchLifeResources.com.
Get printer-friendly version of this story
Send this story to a friend
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
