An Effective Outreach Program
For Your Church
By
Victor Beshir
During
the Divine Liturgy at the end of the “Institution Narrative,” the Church
sings the following hymn: “Amen. Amen. Amen. Your Death O Lord we proclaim;
Your holy Resurrection and Ascension into the heavens we confess. We praise You,
we bless You, we thank You, O Lord, and we entreat You, O our God.”
In
every Divine Liturgy, this hymn is a promise to our Lord that we promise to
proclaim his Death, which is to evangelize.
Therefore, evangelizing is not a choice, it is a must. It is a
commandment and a vow that we all need to fulfill.
But,
how do we evangelize? We can
evangelize by:
·
meeting people and proclaim the good news (The
Gospel), OR
·
bringing people to the church and talk about our
Lord inside the Church, OR
·
making use of other methods: evangelistic books,
brochures, video tapes, DVDs, Internet websites, e-mails, letters, newspapers,
TV, and so on..
+ + +
In
this lecture, I am going to concentrate on the method of bringing people to the
church. But, I like to make it clear from the beginning of this lecture that the
objective is evangelism. How
to bring people to the church? This question deals with the method you use to
bring people to the church. So
bringing people to Church is just a method.
The real objective is evangelism.
What
are the advantages of bringing people to Church?
There
are many advantages of evangelizing when you have the person come inside the
Church.
b-
Spiritual
impact. In
the Orthodox Church, the house of God has its own spiritual impact on people.
It draws people nearer to God. The
late H.G. Bishop Youaness, bishop of Gharbia, Egypt, and a great contemporary
Coptic scholar, talked about a famous international architect cried when he
entered a church in a monastery in Egypt, because he felt the presence of God
there.
c-
Church Structures.
The Church has icons, altar,
candles, and its own special structures.
They each, either individually or collectively, pass some spiritual
messages to the visitors.
d-
Optional
Tour. Visitors can have a
tour to hear about the spiritual
meaning of everything inside the church.
e-
Ask
Questions. The Church can
offer a question and answer session after the tour to answer some of the
visitor’s questions.
f-
Bible
Study. The Church can announce
date, time and place of a Bible study where the visitor can learn more
about the faith
g-
Visual
Room. Visitors can see a
power point presentation about the Church on television, VCR or DVD.
h-
Guest
Book. Visitors can
voluntarily leave their names, addresses, e-mails, phones, and write their
comments.
i-
One on
One Discussion. Visitors can
mingle with Church servants and talk one on one.
j-
Spiritual
Sessions with a priest. Visitors
can speak privately with a priest in a spiritual counseling room.
k-
Available
Brochures. Visitors can get
their hands on any available brochures that Church provides.
l-
Shop at
Gift Shop. The visitor can
leave with something from the church. The
gift shop or bookstore offers books, booklets, videos, CD’s, and gifts that
visitors can take back to read more about my church and also to show their
friends and family members. This
way, evangelism efforts continues with the visitors and their friends too.
Do
you agree with me that bringing people to the Church would be a great evangelism
method? Here are ways we can use
this method:
The Church as a Tourist Attraction:
1-
I know the words “tourist attraction” might
shock some of you, but remember two things:
·
Making the Church a tourist attraction is not the
objective—tourism is just a method to bring people to the church.
·
Tourist attraction has many benefits as mentioned
above.
2-
The idea
of using a church as a tourist attraction is well known in many parts of
the world. For example, In Paris,
tourists visit the Notre Dame Church. In
3-
People
like to visit “Tourist attractions” as long as they find something
there for them, historical or cultural or artistic, just to mention a few.
4-
By using the church as a “Tourist Attraction,”
the Church is open to local people and to tourists from all over the world.
Some of those visitors would never hear about the Orthodox faith unless
the Church is open for them.
5-
Tourists
like picking up free brochures or booklets and buying books and gifts.
They also like having tours and finding someone to explain the site for
them and to answer their questions. Therefore,
it is easy to evangelize in this very simple way.
6-
In addition to the above advantages, let me add
the following:
-
7- People will come voluntarily to your church.
To appreciate that, think about the efforts someone could make to
convince a person to come to the church and how long that could take.
8-
People will not only come, but they will gladly listen to your spiritual talk during the tour and have their questions
answered.
9- People will also be happy to receive all your free brochures,
flyers, booklets, books, and booklets.
10-
People will directly experience the touch of the house of
the Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit.
11-
Some people will be happy to come to
your Bible study.
12-
Some people will be eager to sit with a
priest.
13-
People can visit other Orthodox Churches worldwide if they have a list of all
Orthodox Churches in the world.
Some
people discovered the power of evangelism through the use of a church as a
tourist attraction. They have a
church that was not built to serve a congregation, but was built for the purpose
of evangelism. This church is in
To
attract tourists, you have to have something unique and attractive. So,
What
Are The Unique and Attractive Attributes in the Coptic Orthodox Churches in
North America, Europe, or Australia?
1-
Some churches
have unique Coptic structures with domes and church towers.
This beautiful structure is very attractive to Americans.
In Clearwater, Florida, I remember when our church was completed, a
journalist called me insisting to visit the church, even if the church was
closed. She came while the church
was closed and told me that her friends could not stop talking about the beauty
of the structure of the building. On
that day, I explained to her the spiritual meaning of the structure of the
building. I expected the visit will
last for a few minutes, but to my surprise we spent almost two hours there; she
was thirsty to hear about this great spirituality.
2- Most
of our churches have the old ICONOSTASIS (Icon holder), which is the
wooden divider between the altar and the nave of the church.
Did
you know that the making of this iconostasis goes back to the fourth century? We
can easily write this in our brochures and web pages--we invite people to
come to see artifacts from the fourth century. The
Iconostasis we have today has the same design and woodwork that were available
since the fourth century.
3- Most
of our churches have Coptic Icons:
Coptic art is unique to the Coptic Church.
People will love to see the icons and learn about the spiritual meaning
behind each icon.
4- Adding
a museum can be an addition unique attribute.
It can be a simple museum with pictures of monasteries and churches.
More people will come to see your museum.
It doesn’t have to be sophisticated. Whatever you show, it is more
likely that the visitors have never seen before. When you write about it,
mention the word “
If
your church has one of the features mentioned above, then your church could be
used as a tourist attraction.
How
Do you Start This Project?
1-
Start small
& simple:
Open your church each Saturday morning for three hours. Later,
you can add more hours and other days.
2-
Prepare
Brochures about the Coptic Church:
You may use the one in the
Evangelism web page: www.suscopts.org/evangelism
3-
Prepare a Flyer:
Keep it simple, short,
attractive and compelling in its invitation.
Have an attractive picture, a map and directions to the church.
Include the address, phone, e-mail, web page, schedule of priest
visitation sessions, and English Bible study meeting times.
4-
Prepare the
Evangelist Workers: Train
them on how to guide a tour and what to say about the church, How to evangelize
people. How to follow up with people
who show interest in the church.
5-
Prepare Others:
Train people who will work in the gift shop, in the cafeteria (if
you plan to open the church cafeteria and offer delicious Egyptian food), or
those who will prepare materials or who will work on public relations, and so
on.
6-
Prepare an
attractive web page for the church: Nowadays, first thing anybody
does when learning about a particular church or company, is to search online to
see if that place has a website. Prepare
a simple, yet compelling one.
7-
Prepare a gift
shop (Book Store): Fill
it with books, booklets, gifts, photo, cards, souvenirs, Coptic music, Coptic
Videos, and some Egyptian stuff. Make sure it has evangelistic materials.
8-
Prepare a small
Museum: Fill it with
Coptic icons, pictures of Coptic Monasteries and old churches, some Coptic
antiques from Khan Al-khaleely, and also some big pictures of the pyramids and
other old Egyptians artifacts pictures.
9-
Prepare a room
where people can watch a video tape or DVD or a Power Point presentation:
It can be a very simple and even a short presentation.
10-Prepare
your church and your congregation:
Have enough signs that lead
to the church. Get the congregation excited about the project and get as many
people you can to participate in the project. You
can’t just do it yourself; you need to get the whole Church’s support.
11-Look
for ways to let visitors and tourists know about your church:
·
In every American city there are offices to
contact:
-
Tourism Development Office
-
Visitors Bureau
-
Web page similar to: http://www.visittampabay.com/do/heritage/index.php
(Where you can add your church web page)
-
For the state, there is a similar web page where
you can add your church web page. Here
is an example:
http://www.visitflorida.com/destinations/area.php/ca=75
·
The Tourism Development Office can help you make
your church known to visitors and tourists.
·
If you can’t allocate your Tourism Development
Office, contact the Chamber of Commerce in your area.
·
In addition to the above, you can visit the web
pages of the city, county, and state, and ask them to have your Church website
link added to their web pages.
·
You can also contact hotels and tourist
information centers to put your church’s flyers in their racks.
·
You can also contact museums and universities in
your area. Some would be very
interested when they hear that you have artifacts from the fourth century, and
they may help you.
12-If
you want to start with a big open house:
you can invite newspapers, TV stations, tourist companies, hotels’
receptionists, tourist associations (if you have any in your city), the mayor,
the museums officials, and others who work in tourism.
13-Prayer
Group: It is essential that you
establish a prayer group that prays for every visitor comes to the church.
Without prayers we can not attract people to our church.
========================================
1-
This a good project to
open up our churches and to start evangelism.
Instead of having closed static churches, more Copts will get used to
having visitors in the church and will start to accept the idea of evangelism.
2-
From the names you collect in the visitors
“Guest book,” you can start
catechetical classes.
3-
This project can attract many people from your
congregation, such as retired people and youth.
Very soon, we will see many of the first immigrated people from Egypt
reach their retirement. Those people
have great experience and dedications that we can easily utilize in this
project.
4-
I see the Tourism Attraction project as a
good starting point for evangelistic activities in many Coptic Churches
in USA, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
We
all need to start this project in our churches.
I will be happy to help. If
you have a question, contact me (beshirv@google.com).
I will be happy to come to your
church to train your evangelism workers on how to conduct a church tour.