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How does your community perceive your church? Do people know that your church is concerned with the whole range of needs represented in the community – emotional, physical, and spiritual? Are people from the community open to approaching your church members with needs? Your goals for this Sunday should be to increase community awareness of your church and to begin cultivating a relationship between your church and the surrounding community.

•  Encourage people to invite their neighbors – including children and teens – to attend church on this special Sunday and then to share lunch with them.

•  Contact neighbors of the church (those who live in the area) and offer them one or two hours of service from the church, such as yard work or home repairs. This weekend, have Sunday School class members give some time to the church's neighbors. Invite them to Sunday School and upcoming outreach events if they don't already have a church home.
 
•  Encourage classes to volunteer regularly at the local rescue mission or soup kitchen. Schedule classes to volunteer on a rotating basis, allowing each class the opportunity to volunteer every few weeks. Include children and youth.

•  Examine the ways your Sunday School interacts with and ministers to the various types of people in your community. Click here for USA/Canada community demographics. Use this information to learn what age, economic, and ethnic groups are in your church's community. Then determine if there are groups of people in your community to which your church needs to minister.

•  Use this as an opportunity to reach neighbors by starting new small group Bible studies in various neighborhoods.

•  Sponsor a harvest party or hayride this week, and advertise it to the community. Place banners on the church property, hang flyers in neighborhood stores, and advertise with local newspapers or radio stations. At the party, distribute invitations and information about the opportunities that await them at Sunday School.

•  Launch a new outreach Sunday School class in a different language or begin a new ESL (English as a Second Language) outreach program to minister to immigrants in the community. If there is interest, sponsor Spanish (or another language) classes, so English speakers can learn to communicate in the native language of others.