Seminar Promotion

1. Start with your leaders. Schedule Bill or Tyler to meet with your staff and/or leadership board. The involvement of the pastor and staff is essential for Making Friends to “take” in your congregation. They must be modeling Making Friends for the movement to spread within your church.
2. Promote! Promote! Promote!
   • Begin promotion six weeks before the seminar.
   • Use bulletin inserts and posters/ Making Friends PowerPoint slide. (We will provide the graphics.)
   • If you are in the Columbus area, schedule Bill or Tyler to bring an announcement at a worship service or to preach a message on reaching the spiritually lost.
3. Expand the ownership. Recruit your staff, small group leaders and other influencers. The long-term success of Making Friends depends on having broad ownership among the leadership and congregation. Explain how Making Friends fits into the big picture of your church’s evangelism program and disciple-making ministry.
4. Move beyond the “usual suspects.” The people most attracted to the seminar most likely will be those who are already evangelizing others. Work to recruit those beyond the already committed.
5. Don’t miss the obvious. It is easy to focus on planning the program rather than praying for its success. Recruit people to pray for the success of the Making Friends seminar. When it comes to sharing the gospel, the spiritual warfare intensifies greatly.
6. Don’t lose momentum. If you do not follow up with people within the first ten days after the seminar, you will lose the momentum that the Holy Spirit has generated. Develop a follow-up plan now.

Seminar Follow-Up
In order for Making Friends to become a way of life, have a follow-up plan in place before the seminar is held. Here are some ideas that we recommend.

1. Meet with each seminar attendee within 2 weeks of the seminar to talk over their action plan (one-on-one or in a group setting). Doing this will increase the likelihood that their commitments will go from the seminar workbook to their daily lives.
2. Launch Making Friends small groups using the seminar workbook/ small group study. Some of the material will be review, but there are many additional exercises and Bible studies.
3. Encourage existing small groups to adopt the 3x4x15 Plan (groups of three people meet four times for 15 minutes to pray for their pre-Christian friends).
4. Encourage each staff person to develop a circle of three pre-Christians they are praying for and relating to intentionally.
5. Feature a monthly Making Friends testimony in the worship service.
6. Schedule a reunion two months after the seminar for attendees to share about their progress and to receive encouragement in pressing forward in their friendships.