One night, someone new walked through the doors of City On a Hill. She had never visited our church and had recently lost two family members to COVID-19. After we had a few text and email conversations, she came to attend our GriefShare group, hoping to get comfort by connecting with others.
But before she showed up, she found City On a Hill online. Overwhelmed by grief, she was searching for help online and our Explorer Campaign—a cooperative campaign program
that connects people in need with local churches—acted as a bridge to connect us.
City On a Hill, like so many other churches, has a unique “DNA” of ways we serve our surrounding community. Our campaign team at Gloo showed us that topics like loneliness, anxiety, relationships, and sadness were the top needs in our community and the best match with our specific church. Armed with that knowledge, we began to equip ourselves with a workflow, or follow-up process, to serve incoming people who had those needs.
And it’s working. Since the campaign’s start, we’ve offered counseling to over a dozen new people, extending an invitation to groups and classes offered through our church that address felt needs like marriage, anxiety, grief, etc. It hasn’t been all in person, either. We’ve engaged through text messages and phone calls, while others have met me one-on-one in a coffee shop.
We use this technology as another tool to live out our vision statement which is, in part, “Making church a safe place for people.” We knew that multitudes of people in Dallas/Fort Worth are hurting, alone, and in need. We just didn’t have an effective way to let them know our church is close by, and that we care.
In many cases, we’ve found that people need help with the basics, too—three of the new people who’ve connected to our physical gatherings have all been without transportation. So in response, we set up a 'rides to church' process in response to this pattern and have seen success with it already. We have 8 drivers in various parts of the metroplex signed up and ready to drive new people to our church building when needed.
The woman who joined our GriefShare group that night sent me a personal message to say that she was coming to church the following Sunday because she enjoyed the church community so much. To us, these new connections aren’t just another pageview in a sea of anonymous internet users. They are right here in our community, wanting to be known and connect with a church that is a safe place to share their secrets. They are real people in need of true hope.
And, while we’re utilizing modern means to find and connect with new people, this is simply us being the Church in a timeless way—helping to meet the needs of the people around us.