State fair or county fair church booths
Has your church ever had a booth at a state or county fair? When I was growing up, the Minnesota Baptist Association would set up a booth each year at the Minnesota State Fair, and my church would provide people to staff it on one of the days of the fair. I’m not sure why they stopped, but it probably had to do with either cost or difficulty finding people to man the booth. I can think of a few goals a church might have in mind when setting up a booth. Evangelism is one, of course. Name recognition for the church is another, but that one is better suited for a county fair than for a state fair. Also I think selling Biblical literature to edify believers would be a useful activity. On the other hand, does selling things make you more of a business than a ministry?
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material, I’d have the stand labeled XYZ in BIG LETTERS with a ministry of EFG Baptist Church in smaller.
If you are going for name recognition there’s plenty of goodies:
- tracts
- Scripture Portions (Gospel of John) in whatever languages are spoken in your locale.
- New Testaments in the translation of your choice in English
- Complete NTs (see #2 above). Spanish NTs should be very affordable. I’d check with the Gideons to see what they have available.
which are not all that expensive.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Depending on how big your booth is, and the size of your community, there are many options. In a small-town setting, name recognition is certainly a worthy goal. We handed out Gospel bugs. They were yarn creations our ladies made during the year based on the wordless book. They went with a Gospel tract and church information. Printed balloons are another cheap but likable gift. A couple times when we had more space, we cordoned off part of the booth and did short puppet shows every 30 minutes. Our adults would mingle on the fringes with parents while the children watched the 8-12 minute program about a Bible story or Bible truth. We also gave away a door prize - usually a Honeybaked ham coupon since our event was usually just prior to the holidays. People had to sign up to win, giving us a mailing list (this purpose was disclosed on the entry to avoid charges of deceit) for future contact. We would have all kinds of literature and usually NTs as well.
I have pictures if anyone is interested, but I can’t figure out how to post them here in the forum.
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
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