08380
May 14, 2008
Multimedia outreach
East Tennessee Presbytery awareness campaign includes billboards, TV spots
 A billboard in East Tennessee Presbytery LOUISVILLE – East Tennessee Presbytery wants people to know its Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations are alive and well, and so it’s proclaiming it from the highways and byways, airwaves and fairways.
Television advertising spots and roadside billboards placed by the presbytery herald the news that the doors of PC(USA) churches in the region are open and welcoming everyone to come.
The effort is part of an “awareness campaign” that began in December 2007 with television commercials and has been enhanced by the billboards, which first went up in March, said Donna Hoppestad, marketing and advertising consultant for East Tennessee Presbytery and an elder in the PC(USA).
“We have, just like most of the other presbyteries, been experiencing slow-to-no growth,” she said. “Everyone is having problems with attracting new people.”
Many churches in the presbytery “just didn’t know what they needed to do to get the word out that they were still there,” Hoppestad said. “They just didn’t know how to go outside their doors.”
A presbytery committee called New Vision was formed to address the issue and the awareness campaign is among the results. Hoppestad said the project has funding through the end of 2008.
The television ads, which are “scaled back” currently but will pick up again in the fall, are from the larger “Here and Now” campaign produced through the national offices of the PC(USA), Hoppestad said.
The 30 billboards, which include the PC(USA) logo, were created by the presbytery and are located in neighborhoods near the denomination’s churches. Nine different sayings such as “Find Hope. Here and Now.” rotate every 30 days, and the signs will be up at least six months, she said.
Hoppestad also is visiting with the nearly 80 congregations within the presbytery to talk about creative ways to do outreach and evangelism. “I’m sort of a cheerleader. We come up with ideas together,” she said.
Churches in the presbytery are now doing everything from festivals to community gardens in order to bring people in, Hoppestad said. And grant money for new initiatives also is available through the presbytery that congregations can apply for, she said.
“We feel that we’re … the best kept secret,” said the Rev. Lina R. Hart, East Tennessee Presbytery’s associate executive or equipping congregations. There are many congregations “doing dynamic things in their community and people just need to know about it.”
The promotional campaign “was the type of thing that no one church could do on its own,” she said. “This was something that the presbytery could do … and should do.”
The hope is that the process “would engender energy,” because “that’s what touches people’s lives,” Hart said.
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