Josh Greene, Lead Pastor of First Baptist Church Fairdale, is passionate about community involvement in the local church. In this post he outlines how his church gets involved with their local high school. While schools provide incredible potential for outreach and ministry, many of our churches fail to have a lasting or recognizable presence on campus. May Josh’s wisdom from experience challenge and excite our own ministries to get involved with our local schools.
We at FBC Fairdale love the relationship we have with the local high school in our community. We are often asked how did we get that good relationship with them. There are several factors that have built this healthy relationship (God’s grace, time, neighborhood folks, etc.).
With that said, here are some things we have done and still do to help us connect with schools and build relationships with the coaches.
- We attend practices.
- We attend games.
- We linger around to congratulate them.
- We ask if we can come by a practice.
- We show up at practices.
- We bring coolers of Gatorades to hand out after practice.
- We feed them pre-game meals.
- We support them in any fundraisers they do. (I am always happy to pay the softball team to wash my car! And my children love to attend a pancake breakfast.)
- We offer to further support them by buying & wearing their gear! (Coaches love this! I have shirts from every sport at Fairdale.)
- Once time has passed and relationships are established, we ask what else we can do.
- Pick up trash.
- Mop the gym floor.
- Sweep the floors.
- Line the fields.
- We offer to give players rides. (Rare but we have done it.)
- We stay visible to them.
- We text the coach to congratulate him after a victory.
Our church just wants to be involved.
Overall, we genuinely just become “fans” of their programs. We want them to win. We cheer for them. We support them.
I hope this helps. Seems so simple and basic. But we think it’s great!
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This post originally appeared on Josh’s personal blog.