Spirit Song United Methodist Church

Last Saturday, October 25th, Spirit Song “officially” launched as a new church. It was somewhat anti-climactic since we’ve been having weekly worship services since the beginning of September. We didn’t “officially” launch back then for several reasons; first, we didn’t know where we would be meeting until the first week of August and therefore didn’t have time to put together an advertising plan before our first worship service. Another reason was that many of those dedicated people who had put so much effort in getting our church off the ground back last fall and spring weren’t going to be back from summer trips and vacations until October. So it just made sense to put off the “official” launch until later in October when more people would be back and we would have time to plan a big direct mail campaign.

You’ll notice I keep putting quotes around that word “officially.” By that I mean to suggest that the launch date was really kind of an arbitrary thing. Our first worship service was September 6th and we decided to call those following half dozen services “preview” services. But that didn’t really change the fact that we were worshiping and functioning as a church. I guess the bottom line is that our ”real” launch was, for all intents and purposes, back in September. For that reason our “official” launch last Saturday just didn’t have that high level of excitement and anticipation that you might expect.

However, it was still a very nice service. We had a fairly good crowd, (just under 50), which seemed quite full given the intimate space we have (just 80 chairs at the moment). Our praise band just keeps getting better and better. People seem to like the style of worship and my sermons have been well received. Every week we’ve had first-time worshippers and they all say that they intend to come back. So, I guess we’ll just have to take each week as it comes, do our best to present a quality worship experience, and make sure everyone feels welcome.

Our next opportunity for a “launch” will be in January. Discovery Pointe Church, which is currently meeting at the school on Sunday mornings, has informed me that they will definitely be in their own building on the first Sunday in January. Which means we will be moving our worship services to Sunday mornings beginning January 4th. Having worship services on Sunday mornings should help us grow far more quickly and we’ll want to make sure we publicize that time and date change. So it’s likely that we’ll do another direct mail campaign (if we can afford it) and probably pick a Sunday morning in mid-January to “re-launch” Spirit Song.

Church marketing can be expensive but really the best advertising is free – when you invite a friend or neighbor to worship with you here at Spirit Song. And you can do that at any time. See you in church.

Blessings,

Steve

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 08:05 PM and is filed under General. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.