January 2004

New Hope Christian Church recently invested around ten thousand dollars. If your are wondering whether they chose a tech stock, a blue chip stock, or a mutual fund, think again. They put their money in a Holiday Bash! On December 14, 2004 they hosted a “bridge-event” that drew over 1000 people.

Keith Spurgin, the senior pastor at New Hope, says admission was free. “We didn’t want to charge in order to fight against ‘the church is always after money mentality’. We cast the vision to our Home Teams and asked them to make it their goal to contribute $100-$200/team. They contributed $3,500. The remaining $6,500 we covered out of our evangelism budget. We never view evangelism as an expense but as an investment into the Kingdom of God.”

The church printed tickets for the Holiday Bash which listed the retail value at $25 and gave a description of the event. Members of New Hope could sign out tickets and were clearly instructed to give them to unchurched people. The church initially printed 800 tickets and had to go back and print 400 more because of the demand. Keith says, “It was totally a God-thing. People loved it! We are 500 people and the Holy Spirit brought in another 500 for this event. That has to be God! At the event we showed a 3-minute DVD promoting our Christmas Eve service and we had between 600 & 700 on Christmas Eve.”

They chose Southfork Ranch, a combination convention, concert, and banquet facility, as the venue. They had a flag football tournament and great food catered by Southfork. There were all kinds of activity for the kids from face painting, to pictures with Santa, to crafts. The women loved the free tours of the Southfork mansion and of course the Cowboy game on a big screen was a hit with the men. According to Keith, “God blessed it hugely!”

When asked if it was hard to find volunteers during such a busy time of year, Keith said, “The beauty of this is how little we had to do because the Southfork staff did most of the legwork. There were probably only 10 of our people who actually worked at the event. We wanted everyone to be free to host their friends that came.” Organizing the Flag Football tournament was a big administrative task that New Hope’s Youth Pastor handled. The church did have to set up the crafts and provide their own Santa. During the event, which ran from 3:00 pm - 7:00 pm, the crafts and the pictures with Santa (for which there was a $1 charge) were accomplished with a mixture of staff and volunteers.

The flag football tournament was a big draw for the men and opened the door for them to invite others. One New Hope elder invited all the dad's from his son's football team to come along with their wives and kids. Another couple invited most of their neighborhood and they had 13 people at the event. Keith says the only downside to the event was that some of the guys got a little over competitive. “A few tempers flared along the way. No fights but some definite trash-talking. Needless to say, the testosterone was knee deep by the time they got to the championship game! One of our big guys who was a referee stepped in and put things back in perspective reminding everyone that this was about honoring God and had prayer with the teams which settled everything down.”

 

New Hope has other "bridge" activities, which they define as fun, non-threatening, felt-need kind of events that link their church to the community. They hold baptism celebrations at a nearby lake where they have food, games, swimming and volleyball. Another event is “Brunch at Birmingham” where they invite unchurched friends to a full brunch held outside the school where their church meets. This brunch usually kicks off a new teaching series and that day special drama or music is planned. The guest are, of course, not only invited for brunch but encouraged to stay for church too. When asked if these type events are profitable Keith says, “What’s interesting about these events is that they don’t always bring an immediate return but later when a family gets in trouble or has some problems New Hope is now their church in their minds so that is where they will come. We’ve seen that happen many times. Sometimes two years later.”