This is Good News! A Story from Cornerstone Assembly

Our church had stalled. We saw little to no guests on Sundays. We had not seen salvations, water baptisms, or growth in years.

But we didn’t want to stay there. We wanted to reach people far from God. So we made one small but intentional shift to help us do that.

Here’s what we did: two to three times throughout the year, we started putting on events to reach into our community—simple things like an Easter Egg Hunt or a Fall Festival in October. We hosted events that focused on building bridges into our community, connecting with people who normally wouldn’t come to our church, and serving our neighbours.

It started small, with 75-100 people in attendance. But as we were consistent, it quickly grew and multiplied, until in 2019 we had our biggest outreach event ever with over 600 people in attendance. Not too bad for our little church of 80 people.

Now the pandemic obviously affected those events in some pretty significant ways. Not only in terms of gathering sizes, but volunteer engagement and budget.

It would have been an easy off-ramp, an opportunity to quit, because we’d done good work. But we had also seen people come to Jesus, we’d seen our church grow in love for God and others, and we didn’t want to lose that momentum.

So we made another small but intentional shift: instead of doing big events, we started hosting smaller pop-up blessings in our parking lot.

For context, our church shares a parking lot with a middle school, and every day, hundreds of parents and students drive by our church or park in our lot to pick up their kids from school.

What an opportunity!

So, at strategic times of the year (e.g. back to school, Christmas break, and Easter break), we’ve set up a table in the parking lot and purchased some fluorescent poster boards from the dollar store. We’ve given away free cookies, ice cream sandwiches, hot chocolate and more! And along with the treats, we give a little sticker that reads “God loves you and so do we,” and an invitation card to church.

The best part? It’s cheap and easy to run.

Often only one afternoon’s worth of work, four to five volunteers, and $200 – max! And as we get in the rhythm of doing it, it gets even easier over time.

Since we started doing this, we have built trust with parents, with the community, and with the school, so much so that the principal offered me a job doing lunch supervision at the school next door!

Since then, when I run into people in the community and tell them where I work, there is such a positive response! “Oh, that church with the events, the cookies?”

As a result of these outreaches, we’ve had multiple families check out our church, start attending regularly, and even give their lives to Jesus.

In fact, recently, we had a young mom with two teenagers come for the first time.

She came because her kids go to the school next door, had heard about all the positive work we’ve been doing, and thought, “Wow, this is a different kind of church!”

One Sunday she decided to check us out. She came with her two kids, gave her life to Jesus, and has been on fire ever since!

And that’s just one example of how God is using something as simple as cookies and ice cream to make an eternal impact in the lives of others.

All because we were intentional about reaching out and raising the profile of our church in the community.

Reaching into your community doesn’t need to be fancy and it doesn’t need to be expensive—it just needs to be genuine.

More than anything, people want to know that you care, that you love them.

What a better way to show that than by serving them cookies, ice cream, or whatever it is that you have, in the name of Jesus?

I want to encourage you to get creative, think small, and think about your own local context. How can you be a blessing in that place?

Because you never know how God might use it to make an eternal difference in the life of someone else.

Zach Sloboda is the lead pastor of Cornerstone Assembly in Truro, Nova Scotia.

Photos courtesy Cornerstone Assembly.

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To see previously posted “This is Good News” stories, please click here.

To view or download posted “This is Good News” videos, visit www.paoc.org/theloop.