Hi everyone,
Our brewery church team was hard at work in August. We’re now 10 weeks in! Here are a few updates on what’s been happening.
Examples of what we’ve studied:
- Evidence for the existence of God from the origin of the universe
- Why does God allow pain, suffering and evil in the world?
- Examining what Jesus was like in Mark Chapter 1 and more.
Pictures from August:
As far as attendance goes, we’re currently running in the mid-teens each week. We’ve had good discussion each week and have a few regulars who are now coming each week and we’re focused on strengthening those relationships.
Challenges:
We’re working on a “two-pronged” strategy to reach people; part in-person and part online. Ultimately we’d like to be a place primarily for people who are spiritually searching but we’re discovering that this group is pretty skeptical about anything that even remotely resembles “church.” While we are reaching some people in this category, eventually we’d like to reach more.
Some of the people we talk to from this group have had bad experiences and others have voiced that they are hesitant about Christianity because of things they’ve seen in the news. People in this category often tell us they’re coming to visit our group only to not show up. It seems to be a possible symptom of anxiety towards church. What we’ve learned from this is that we’re going to have to be very intentional about building trust with this group.
This process could take awhile since it involves building strong relationships. One theory I have developed is that some won’t come in person for awhile, but they might watch what we’re doing from a safe distance (online and at home). This allows them to see what we’re doing without putting themselves in a potentially uncomfortable situation. By watching what we post over time though, along with personal interactions with us, they may begin to trust that our group is a safe place to explore. For these reasons, we’ve been working on developing a “path” for people who are connecting with us online. It’s not a bad time to do that either. With Covid-19 hanging around, our in-person activities are still somewhat limited.
Online Video Strategy – New Series
We’re attempting to develop several series that will move people through “stages” of their faith. We need to design a journey to help move people from questioning whether or not God exists all the way to trusting and exploring the Bible. We’ve already been developing a Bible Overview series, but we need some videos leading up to that for people who haven’t yet been able to decide if God is even real.
This past month we developed a “teaser” for our next series, which will explore evidence for the existence of God. This first video is designed to get people curious about evidence for God. It plays up the entertainment factor and visuals to hook new viewers. The rest of the series will feature short, more conversational videos, each of which introduce a new piece of evidence of God’s existence. Check out the teaser below:
As you can hopefully see from this video, we’re growing and learning a lot with each new video project. Dana is doing a great job editing these and she even designed the cool Church In A Brewery logo at the end. It will be a few months before we release this series, but hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what we’re working on to help people explore. Jason is also currently working on his first video series which explores Jesus in the Old Testament. This ultimately will help viewers discover that the entire Bible is actually one big story about Jesus.
Getting our weekly meeting established has taken a lot of our focus, but we’ll begin marketing our video journey sometime in the near future. If you’re in Kansas and know someone who might be a good fit for our group, please consider recommending us to them. A personal recommendation from a friend can go a long way and could give them the assurance they need to visit our group.
Thanks so much for reading and supporting us. You’ve helped carry us through these critical early months. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re making an important impact together. Reach out if you have questions or comments! Thanks!
Sincerely,
Nathan
The Brewery Ministries Team