Affinity Evangelism

Your church need not be wealthy or have a lot of people to pull off a successful Affinity Evangelism (AE) event. So these next few posts will be specifically for the church that might be less than 100 in average Sunday morning attendance and has limited funds available.

Please understand this: for a successful AE effort we need the buy in of our church. This ministry lives or dies on the church's willingness to invite friends. No amount of publicity will salvage the people of the church not inviting.

Support and Leadership
You will need the support of your church leadership team (elder board, vestry, deacons, etc.) -- whoever they may be. For them to support they need a clear vision and understanding of AE. Make sure everyone understands this is an evangelistic effort and not a service, hospitality or friendship building project. We don't want just their verbal assent but active participation.

You'll need a team of several people who will lead the planning and execution of this project and they'll need a modest budget. More will be said about budgets in future posts.

Understanding this is an evangelistic effort, you also need to understand this effort will be attacked by the enemy. You need prayer support right from the very beginning planning stages through the actual event itself.

Time
Give yourselves 6-8 months of preparation time. That will give you enough time to cast vision with the leadership team, gain buy in from the congregation and actually plan the events.

Partnering
One last suggestion: consider partnering with another small church in your community. You don't have to do so to make it bigger (ie. more events or people). Bigger isn't necessarily better. However, the synergy of partnering together for Kingdom purposes could enhance all that you do.