A Warm Invitation

I learned a valuable lesson in ministry this week: a personal invitation can go a long way. I have been struggling with the best way to do outreach for OUTLook, because it has seemed that my previous methods have been futile. I can make public statuses, facebook events, and large announcements, but somehow we kept running into issues because people wouldn’t come to our meetings. OUTLook’s membership has radically shifted over the past two years, and I have really been struggling with how to keep the few new members we get.

Soren recommended that I follow up with each of the new members individually, and I sort of rolled my eyes, thinking that that was such an obvious solution, but doubting that it would do much. That reaction, was in fact, me not wanting to put in the extra time it would take to write all those notes. I am strapped for time, and this was another thing to add to my growing to do list. However, I received a message the day after Soren made his recommendation from someone from my old worship community here in Boston who invited me to a special event. He knew that it was an event that would appeal to my interest in languages, specifically Spanish, and took the time to send out an individualized invitation. The gesture meant so much to me that I did two things. 1) I went to the event, and 2) decided to try that out for the next OUTLook meeting.

Lo and behold, it worked. That personal invitation, instead of a mass email or facebook event, was enough to bring back some returners. OUTLook will never be a group that is as large as the other LGBTQ groups on campus, and we certainly don’t want to be, but having four guests at the meeting means a much more diverse conversation than if we had one. This gives me hope that I might actually have these skills in ministry, when for a while I thought I didn’t. I presumed other people would do some of the outreach for me, so it is empowering to know I can do it myself.

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