A lot of churches have a Fall push. Are any of your churches doing that? You know, summer vacations are over, kids are back in school, new residents are moved in and getting settled, a rhythm is developing and many churches use that time to try and connect with new people. Ads, mailers, door hangers, public events, press releases, new programs, classes, et al. Around here, the big churches use and actually increase their attendance via those Outreach postcard mailers. I have found that smaller churches do not typically bear the same fruit even when using the identical methods. Like those disclaimers for Jenny Craig. *Results not typical. Your experience may vary.* 
Anyway, I’d like to hear what churches are doing, or are not doing, now that we’re nearing that time of year.
I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship; husband to Jen; Dad to Katherine, Elias, Madeline, and Kilian. If you're in town you can probably find me in the local coffee house or running through the neighborhoods.
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Preface: We are a Gospel-centered church located in Greenville, NC, a college city that doubles in size this time of year simply due to the collegiate influx to East Carolina University and our local community college. The neighborhood we are in (downtown, urban core) is at the heart of the university, and we meet in a bar whose economy is based around that neighborhood.
What We’re Doing: We are helping move the students in, giving away free school supplies, and gearing some of our flyers to them (ie: we have a flyer that reads “Not Your Parents’ Church”). But because of the city’s interaction with the college, the city sponsors a family-oriented event that is basically a tailgate party the Friday night before a home football game. This party, called Freeboot Friday, is located in the downtown core, and we will be helping tremendously with that event this year: volunteering our time to setup and breakdown, working with the vendors, checking IDs, and giving out free bottled water. Our band will likely also be involved with the event and at our meeting venue’s open-mic blues night. It’s also our year anniversary in a couple of weeks.
Conclusion: Please pray for us.
Since our church has an inner city ministry where we bus about 50 children in each Sunday (my sister cooks all 50 breakfast every Sunday – she’s a saint!) – we get a suppy list from their local school and we bring donations into church starting in July. We collect thousands of pencils, paper, etc. and back packs too. Then we fill 200 backpacks and donate them to their entire elementary school. We also adopt a child and buy them their first day of school clothes. We have about 60 children who usually sign up and we get their sizes – and buy shirt, pants, socks and shoes.
In the past we have done a carnival where we distribute the items so we can meet the parents. During the carnival we offer parenting and marriage classes and we watch their children while they attend the classes. Then during the school year we have one weeknight a week where these children can come to our church and we help the kids with their homework.
Our church is becoming multi-racial as a result of this ministry. It’s really exciting!
We actually had a Teacher Training Day and have been pleasantly surprised by the excitement that has trickled into the church and beyond.
Our church had never had a plan or strategy for our teachers and what was being taught. Thankfully, that’s all changed now.
We’re a young church (6mo into it). We’ve been building some grass roots momentum this summer. We’re starting a new teaching series in September that we’re utilizing for publicity.
We have a mailer we’re sending out in the area.
We’re publicizing via craig’s list (free and worth a try)
We’re serving at a city-wide labor day festival in our town.
We’ve created an interactive CD-Rom to give away (sound more impressive than it really is but looks really cool).
We’re passing out flyers at local venues (our series relates to the music scene).
We’re placing an ad in an alternative newspaper.
Through this paper we’re sending out an ad in their email newsletter.
We’re hosting a family event at our school this Saturday.
Word of mouth.
This is some of what we’re doing.
Oh, and we don’t have the dilemma you described. We don’t have tons of big churches in our area. And no one really utilizes direct mail (so it’s actually been a valuable tool for publicity for us).
So for us what we’re doing this fall is really trying to take into account our area and not just mimicking what other, bigger churches are doing.
We do have a ton of big churches in our area. I toiled greatly about mailing anything. A pastor friend told me that the mailer is not to get “cold visitors” but rather to give your people something to talk about. So, we will send out a mail piece that hits the second week of Sept. The verbiage on the piece is something to the effect of “no fluff, all bible.” We’ll see….
We are relaunching our small group ministry… we have put a couple “momentum building” opportunities on the calendar… our area is very tied into the school district’s calendar so we have had many people gone over the summer and expect more consistency with the fall.
Our marketing, aside from word of mouth, has been pretty non-existent. However, it has produced healthy organic growth that fits well with the vision God has given. We are in an extremely consumer driven culture and the marketing approaches by most churches fit right into that mold.
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