Let Their Fingers Do The Walking

I was standing near one of the entrances when a group of eight adults entered the auditorium. I will never forget that day because I was able to make appointments to study the gospel with each of them. Over the next several months, we experienced the joy of seeing seven of them obey the Gospel of Christ (2 Thessalonians.1:8; Romans 6:17). Since then, we have established a small group Bible Study in the home of one of our new sisters. We have seen several of their friends and coworkers baptized into Christ. Two of them have married each other and another has helped lead his fiancée to Christ.

How did this all come about? The original eight visitors were all members of a nationally known multi level marketing company. They had recently attended a national conference in which the keynote speaker had encouraged them to commit their lives to Christ and find a Bible based church when they returned home.

One of the members of the group looked in the Yellow Pages to find a church. She told me later, "Yours was the biggest add on the page, so we thought we would all visit your services." The rest (as they say) is history.

This is just one illustration of why I believe the most effective money a church will ever spend on advertising is in the Yellow Pages. Other than being personally invited, this is where most people begin their search for a new church. And yet, most churches have put little or no thought into their advertisement.

Over the years we have tried to create many points of contact with the unchurched our community: television, large metropolitan campaigns with nationally known speakers, door to door campaigns, a professionally designed sign, a daily radio program and a weekly newspaper column. All of these points of entry have produced some fruit, but none have produced as many visitors or baptisms as our Yellow Pages add.

Your chance to advertise in the Yellow Pages comes around just once a year. You will have to live with the results for a long time. So it would be good to plan wisely. Your add will be a good place for Christians who are in your community over the weekend to learn about your service. However, this should not be the primary purpose of your advertisement.

As you plan the advertisement, put yourself in the shoes of the people you want to reach. They will fall into several categories: 1) Recent move-ins looking for a church, 2) Unchurched Boomers with little or no religious background who are looking for help with their families and 3) Generation X'rs looking for community and relationships.

When designing an add consider the following suggestions

Copy Success. Do not try to reinvent the wheel. Find a copy of the Yellow Pages from a large metropolitan area. Look through the Churches section. Ask yourself, "If I were a non-Christian seeking a new church, which adds wold catch my attention, and why?"
Make it big. Make sure your add is the biggest add on the page. It is unlikely that the seeker will take the time to read every add on the page. You want them to notice yours first. If yours is done well enough, it may be the only one they see.
Make it wide. Perhaps you have noticed that most professional presentation programs (i.e. Microsoft Power Point and Lotus Freelance Graphics) default to landscape mode instead of portrait. Movie screens are wider than they are tall. This is because the eye is more comfortable viewing information that is wider than it is tall. Make your add at least two columns wide.
Use color. As you browse the Yellow Pages you will notice that your eyes are drawn to the color ads first. Use a white background with blue ink. If your budget will not permit color, use large blocks of inverted type (Clear type on a black background) at the top and bottom of your ad. Use the inverted type for the name of the church and the telephone number. Surround the add with a heavy border.
Avoid information overload. People do not like to read. They will instinctively avoid wordy ads with too much small type. Just last night a young man told me that our ad attracted his attention because, "There wasn't a bunch of meaningless information in it."
Use Easy-to-read type. Be sure the name of the church is in the largest type and the telephone number is in the second largest type (it is a phone book after all). Do not use more than two fonts in the add. Stick with easily read fonts (i.e. Arial and Times Roman).
Include a map. Instead of standard cartoonish clip art, use a small map identifying the location of the building. This will be especially helpful to newcomers.
Include the preacher's name. This is not intended to communicate a clergy laity concept or to exalt the preacher. The person reading the ad will not even know the preacher, but it does personalize the ad.

A word of caution is necessary about Yellow Page rip-offs. The famous "Walking Fingers" logo and the phrase, "Yellow Pages" are not registered trademarks. Anyone can use them. In some areas, unscrupulous companies will solicit new advertising from local businesses (churches are considered prime targets). The unsuspecting church thinks it is paying for an advertisement in the local telephone book. The ad is instead placed in a privately published book that is delivered to a few local addresses. When the victimized church receives the new telephone book, they discover their advertisement is not in it, and nothing can be done for another year.

In an even more outrageous scam, a company will copy your ad from the local phone book. They will attach it to their letterhead (complete with a walking fingers logo) and send it to you with the notation, "Your Yellow Pages invoice." They will then print one copy of your Yellow Page ad and place it in a library somewhere in the United States. The practice may be highly unethical, but it is legal. Any time you place, an ad or pay your bill, make sure you are dealing with the company listed in your local phone book

Our brethren are forever searching for an evangelistic "silver bullet" with which to convert the world in a single shot. A well-designed Yellow Page add will never convert anyone. It will, however, create a point of contact with lost souls. We must be prepared to show people that we care and present the gospel to them when they respond to our various avenues of outreach. Never forget that the power of God for salvation is not found in gismos and gadgets. The power is in the gospel (Romans 1:16).

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