A Tale Of Two Yard Signs

Last year we changed our promotion strategy going into Easter. Instead of the usual direct mailings and the newspaper ads, we spent that promotional money on ways we could better equip our own church family to invite those they know. The paradigm shift has been successful. This Easter our attendance was up 25% over Easter two years ago

Our big Easter promotion was the hundreds of yard signs that all of our church families put in their yards to promote our Face Your Fears message series that runs from Easter through Mother’s Day. We found this approach to be very effective resulting in the largest weekend service attendance in the history of our church on Easter weekend. Most all of the feedback we have gotten have been very positive like this one below:

I love the Face Your Fears campaign by your church! Since October of last year I have been in the process of rebuilding my life and my spiritual walk with Christ from ground up. Part of my journey has been dealing with anxiety and depression. Then I started to see your clever signs posted all throughout the Lititz Area. I visited your website, learned about your church for the first time and even downloaded last weekend's first message of the series. What I particularly like is the creative and effective means you have employed to bring about the message. It goes right to where people are with an issue they are concerned about. With the website, not only did I find a creative, straight forward, non-religious approach to the issue, but a tremendous gateway to your church. Without the signs, without the website, I'm not sure if or when I would have ever learned about your church. And the church website is also wonderful: lots of great programs, wonderful links.

This comment above which was posted on my blog really encouraged me as this was the exact strategy and goals of our yard sign approach to promoting our series which began on Easter. But as you can expect, not all the feedback we got was as flattering as seen by this e-mail below:

To Whom It May Concern, I would like to respectfully request that you have your parishioners take down all of the 'Face your Fears' signs. Springtime is blooming in all Gods glory outside and these mini billboards are truly junking up the scenery. I went for a walk the other day and when I stopped on the corner for traffic to pass I counted eleven of these signs in clear view.... in the middle of a neighborhood. I'm certain that you didn't intend your message to evolve into graffiti? A few years ago Mr. Scoop had to take down all of his signs of that size and although I'm sure most would argue that your message is 'nobler' it is just as bothersome in such great numbers. It was a clever ad campaign but it's time to be done now. Please let us appreciate the peace & beauty of a lovely Lititz Spring!

Seriously, to anyone who found our yard signs to be a negative, we apologize. Our intent was not to disturb anyone but rather to find an effective and creative way to equip our church family with a unique way that they could invite those in their neighborhoods to Easter and our Face Your Fears message series. It is part of our efforts here at Grace Church to meet as many people as possible right where they are and help move them to where God wants them to be.