Outreach: Who Cares?

I caught the following article on churchrelevance.com…

"Ellison Research recently discovered that four out of ten pastors lack strong interest in increasing community outreach. At the same time, Ellison Research also learned what the 811 ministers who were surveyed are using to reach their communities.
In the last year,
o 70% use Vacation Bible School
o 59% use tracts or magazines
o 56% use events such as block parties or a Fall Festival
o 51% use musical events or concerts
o 50% use mailings or fliers
o 49% use nursing home or retirement center visits
o 42% use “invite a friend to church” days
o 40% use revivals or crusades
o 38% use evangelism training classes or groups
o 37% use door-to-door visitation within the community
o 31% use community service such as cleanup days
o 27% use online efforts such as blogs or web sites
o 26% use audio or visual products such as tapes or DVDs
o 20% use booths at community events such as the county fair
While some ministers may not be interested in increasing community outreach because they lack the resources to do so, it is still surprising that 40% of the ministers surveyed lack a strong interest."

I'm so thankful for a congregation that cares about the world around them. The moment that we start to focus solely on ourselves is the moment that the spiritual life of our church begins to suffer. I've noticed when we don't have a missional (word of the day) focus we (those within the church) begin to grumble and complain about petty things. My philosophy is: we should be so busy being the body of Christ that we don't have time to whine and complain, because there are more people to be served.

Our Pastor of Outreach, Jeff Pfohl, handed me a list of some of the ways that we reached our local community this last year…

Angel Food Ministry
Coat drive for the Muncie Mission
Riley Hospital for Children – Dinner for families at the hospital (fed 50 families)
Downtown Farmland Chili Cook-Off – distributed free water
Muncie Mission church service
Trick or trunk – tracts, candy, & lots of smiles
Holiday Dinners – free food for people in the community
Free hugs and candy canes downtown Farmland
New Years Eve dinner at the Muncie mission
Winterized several homes

Tomorrow Pastor Jeff and several others from the church will be going door to door to several homes in Farmland with “winter survival kits” (Kleenex, chap stick, hand warmers, cough drops and invitations to be our guest at church)

Do you have any cool outreach ideas we might be able to implement this next year.