Recently I was told a story about an “outreach event”. The event, a musical overview of all the songs that his churches fine arts group (orchestra, choir, worship band etc…) had performed over the last year. With the total of “special music” numbers performed by the fine arts department year reaching almost 100, the idea was presented to have people vote for the “best” songs, with the final vote tally determining the play list for the concert. So, a webpage, facebook event page, and a twitter account were all set up for the concert. The website featured short clips of the songs being performed by the groups to help remind those voting of the songs. The top 15 songs would make the playlist for the concert. The “marketing machine” put together posters, flyers and even a video announcement to be played on the displays located throughout the facility. The event was ready to roll!
After 4 weeks of heavy promotion some 500 people showed up for the concert that night. The person who told me the story was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. He went on to tell me that the concert was held on what turned out to be one of the most beautiful days’ that fall. He said that he remembered thinking at the 3:00 pm rehearsal that no one would be there for the 6 pm show. What filled his thoughts was, “Who in their right mind would give up perhaps the last nice night before winter? This is Michigan after all!” Encouraged by the turnout the concert went great. The various performers played great, the sound, lights and video were solid. Additionally the stage set and look was spectacular.
After the concert during a debriefing with one of the Pastors at the church my friend stated “We talked about the music, the band, the sound……. The” show” he continued,”When we got around to talking about the crowd, I asked the Pastor if most of the people at the concert were from the church.” The Pastors reply was that most, but not all. Additionally, a good number of the attendees were people from other churches in the area that really liked the music at this church. My friend said that he headed home and began pondered wasn’t this supposed to be an “outreach event”. Who was the outreach supposed to be to for? Was the target outreach group even invited? How did the promotion and the event reach out and speak to the target outreach group? There seemed to be many more questions than answers.
Make no mistake about it, the concert was a successful one in fact, by most church measurement standards a huge success! The typical indicators were all there, a significant number of people shown up, the attendees all enjoyed and “praised” the artists and the show and the offering was good. But did this “outreach event” really do what it was set up to do? Sure for 4 weeks the church pastors encouraged the Sunday worshippers to invite their friends from their neighborhood and from their work. Posters were put up at local businesses and sent to other churches in the area. The local Christian music store placed the poster in a prominent spot. So who showed up? Mostly people for the church or people from neighboring churches….. My friend said “I can’t be sure that some of the attendees that came were people that are not in the typical Christian circles, and perhaps, the concert was even a turning point is someone’s life that led them back to church.” His conclusion of the outreach event was that the great majority of the people who attended were already regular church goers, and he said, “that had me thinking that perhaps this outreach event was indeed an inside joke”.
