Step By Step – how to plan the event

The dates on these resource pages are for a June 6-7, 2003 event. If these dates just don’t work for your community, still do the event when it works better for you! (just adjust the dates accordingly…)

1. Pray!
    
2. Proposal to your Ministerial
    
   It is VERY important to have the blessing of your ministerial for this event. Better yet is if the ministerial forms a team to plan it. For Love Abbotsford, we had a church that headed up the organization of the event, but formed a planning team from several churches. Another city that has planned this event began at the ministerial level to form their team. That’s probably better!
    
   Draft a proposal letter for your ministerial sometime in the fall, preferably not during a busy time, including info from this site (cut and paste all you need!)
    
3. Connect with Love [Your City]
    
   Once there is agreement from your ministerial or a group of churches (see “Relational Commentment Form”) connect with us and we’ll get you going with your own logo and a password to be able to download all of our resources.
    
4. Form a planning team
    
   Having several churches represented on this team is ideal, but even more important is having people that are excited about the idea and have energy to put into it! Here are the main areas that would need to be covered:
    
   * Prayer
   * Promotion/communication
   * Church/Project co-ordination
   * T-shirts
   * Finances
   * Evening event planning
    
   Start meeting in the fall or early in the new year as frequently as is needed, and practical. It’s great if you can have this team involved in servant evangelism in an ongoing way somehow. In Abbotsford, this team is also involved in helping lead regular monthly events which are headed up by a local church. (called Love Abbotsford – Monthly, a smaller scale event, compared to the June event)
    
   A little more detail on each area…

Prayer

Be proactive; getting prayer chains mobilized, etc.

Promotion/communication

• Mailings
  Mail out an invitation or letter to your churches outlining what the event is about and how to get involved
  Closer to the event, mail out posters, bulletin inserts, etc.
   
• Videos
  You can put together a creative video (or use ours) to be made available for churches to show to their people to invite them into the event.
   
  We also strongly recommend that you try to produce a video the day of the Kindness Explosion which can be shown at the evening worship celebration – very cool!
   
• Posters and bulletin inserts
   
• Banners (a suggestion)
  A 6x3 foot banner with the Love [Your City] logo on it and “showing God’s love…” These are great for having in your church lobby leading up to the event, then on site during the event, then to help decorate the worship celebration venue.
   
• Kindness Cards (a must!)
  A very important part of servant evangelism. With every small gift or act of service we give out a Kindness Card. We don’t do this because we’re about “marketing” our churches. We give a card so that the person has a place to connect if they desire, but our goal is to present Christ in a tangible way – expressing grace, love and mercy.
   
• Sample timeline:

  Fall – Jan.	“green light” from the ministerial
  February	mailing invitations to all the churches in your community
  late March	begin follow-up phone calls to all the churches Find a point person from each church, and find out who can make it to the leaders breakfast
  April 3	free leaders breakfast – 7-8:30am This gives you a chance to relationally communicate the vision of Love [Your City], worship briefly, and show the promo video that you can give to each participating church to show in their services leading up to June If you can’t do the breakfast thing, and need to incorporate it into a ministerial type meeting, that’s ok too.
  May 5	point person meeting – 7pm Find out what projects churches are planning, brainstorm more ideas, and begin to find out where these projects are going to be done (there’s still a month to go, so some churches won’t have all this info yet.)
  May 5	posters, bulletin inserts, sign-up sheets, and banners supplied to churches

Church/Project co-ordinator

• Find out which churches are on board.
• Interact with them, finding out what project(s) they’re doing and where (check out sample church database)
• Make sure they have all the resources they need (kindness card info, posters, T-shirts, etc.)

T-shirts

• We’ve found that every participant having a Love [Your City] T-shirt is a significant part of the event, especially in the way it displays church unity.
   
• Have churches sign up their people with T-shirt sizes. (check out sample sign-up cards and lists) You should be able to work it out with your T-shirt supplier to be able to wait until the week before the event to call in your final numbers (make sure they’ve been able to prepare the design beforehand). That way people are able to sign up on the last Sunday before the event and you can have pretty accurate numbers. Of course, still order extra.

Finances

• First of all, invite churches to fully participate in this event by planning their own servant evangelism projects, and paying for them. This cost will vary, depending on the size of the church, and the types of projects they do. (ie. a coke give-away is more expensive than a car wash.) We call these “project costs”.
   
• What we call “event costs” can be paid for this way: Ask each church to pay $10 per person that is involved from their church (or whatever amount works for your event), and we suggest that the church pay it if is possible, and not the individual, but do what works for you!. Each person then gets a T-shirt, which might cost around $7, and the other $3/person pays for the rest of the event costs – ie. mailings, venue, sound system, etc. (check out sample budget)This, along with waiting for final T-shirt numbers until the last Sunday, is another example of how we’re trying to make this a really do-able event for everyone!
   
• The biggest expense is the T-shirts, and hopefully you will be able to pay for them during the month after the event, so rather than try and get churches to pay up front (and have to guess at the number of their people coming), wait until after the event, confirm how many people came from each church (from the T-shirt order, and Friday registration time) and send them an accurate bill.
   
• Some up-front money will most likely be needed for other expenses, and this can be raised through business/church donation or loan, which can be paid back after the money has been collected from the churches after the event.

Evening event planning
Try to keep these events fun and upbeat!

• Leaders Breakfast
  About 2 months before the event, we invite any pastor/leader/point person who can make it, to a leaders breakfast where we cast the vision and invite questions about the event. We also show the video that we give out to the participating churches to show in their services in the weeks leading up to the event. Check out a sample schedule and handouts in our resources.
   
• Point Person Meeting
  About 1 month before the event, we invite all the participating churches’ point people to an evening meeting to make sure we’re all on the same page. Check out a sample schedule and handouts in our resources.
   
• Friday evening Kick-off
  On the Friday evening we’ve started with a simple registration time, where we’ve set up stations for each church to hand out T-shirts to their people and confirm their numbers. Then we’ve gathered for some worship, a funny drama showing how NOT to do servant evangelism, had someone speak (briefly) reminding everyone why we’re doing this, and then have had a time for prayer. We’ve also done a prayer walk through our city afterwards.
  
  Again, we need to communicate to our leaders and people the simple vision of what we’re doing, and we need to get some simple phrases into their heads, such as…
  - “We’re just showing God’s love in a practical way.”
  - “God’s love is free, so we want to give you something for free too.”
  - “We just want to show that God loves you today.”
   
• Saturday evening worship celebration
  On the Saturday evening, we’ve focused mostly on having a great time of worship, led by worship leaders representing several churches. An important thing to remember here, is to try do songs that represent the scope of the churches participating. Do some hymns and older songs, as well as the newer stuff.
  
  We’ve tried to express our worship through other creative gifts as well, like dance and humour. A highlight of the evening (which you can’t necessarily compare to the awesome worship) is seeing a video of what went on in the city during the Kindness Explosion that day. Very powerful!
  
  Include live testimonies (as there may be some on the video as well) but make sure to have a person “screen” them before they get the microphone!
  
  Have churches meet at their own venues for the actual Kindness Explosion, and encourage them to have a debrief time right after their projects are finished. This is a great time to hear the stories and reactions of people on both the receiving and the giving end.
  
  
  

  (Here's info a recording that came out of one of the first Love Abbotsford worship celebrations. You don't have to go all out with a CD project, but it's just an idea you may consider sometime...)

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