Everyone Outreach gets a refresh
WELS Congregational Services has recently revised Everyone Outreach, a popular program designed to help congregations discover their thought habits and develop new thinking and behaviors that build a culture of outreach. While maintaining its original elements, the revised program will now be a five-hour event instead of the original eight hours.
Rev. Eric Roecker, director of WELS Evangelism and co-developer of the program, says the goal of this revision is to encourage more participation. “Not only might this allow more congregations to participate, but we also hope a larger percentage of each congregation’s members will get involved,” he says. “This is important because the more people who participate, the better chance an outreach culture will be built in each congregation.”
More than 125 congregations have already hosted Everyone Outreach workshops since the program debuted in 2021.
Saving Grace, Mobile, Ala., was one of those congregations. “[Everyone Outreach] challenged deep-seated ideas about how we go about reaching those in our neighborhoods and looked at principles that held us back in our outreach and attacked those thoughts and changed those ideas,” says Rev. Thomas Spiegelberg, pastor at Saving Grace. “I do think it changed a lot of people and how they think about their church and their connection with how they share the gospel.”
Since the workshop, the congregation is focusing more on its children’s ministry and being more intentional with its community outreach events. It also is working on creating a welcoming environment at church for visitors and nonmembers, including extending its Sunday morning experience and encouraging its members to be friendly and open. “We have heavy food and snacks after church,” explains Don Baldwin, a member at Saving Grace and participant in the Everyone Outreach workshop. “When we have food, people stay and visit. And for the new folks, they really enjoy visiting and having conversations and fellowship. That fellowship is important for evangelism.”
He continues, “Everyone Outreach made us talk more about these and get organized.”
Saving Grace has had between 15–20 adult confirmations in the last year, and its new members are also sharing the message they discovered.
“You just want others to have what you have,” says Baldwin.
Learn more about Everyone Outreach and how your congregation can participate at everyoneoutreach.com. Read a story about how Don and Ammie Baldwin plant gospel seeds in their neighborhood in this month’s Forward in Christ magazine.
