A Revival Is Not A Sunday Service. Stop Advertising It Like One.

The Air Force and the Army

We are called to be fishers of men. When you have a date on the calendar and a room to fill, I think about it as 2 forces working together.

The Army is your people on foot, going door to door with flyers. The Air Force is your ads. You need both of them. In my experience about 60% of the room comes from the Air Force and about 40% comes from the Army.

One person running ads can cover the ground of 1,000 people handing out flyers. You can dig the foundation with a shovel, or you can rent the backhoe.

Most of what gets written about church ads is about Sunday morning. A revival is a different animal. It has a start date and an end date, it usually has a guest, and the person you are reaching is not always looking for a church home. They are looking for God to move.

2 kinds of events, 2 kinds of bait

Before you build anything, decide which one you are running. It changes the creative and it changes the platform.

If the bait is weak, nothing downstream can save it. You can put $1,000 behind a bad flyer and get 10 people.

For a revival I start with 3 videos. The senior pastor talking to the camera. The senior pastor with his wife. A testimony from somebody whose life was changed in that room. Real footage beats anything polished.

The 9 things on a flyer that works

For an outreach, the flyer does the heavy lifting. Miss one of these and you lose people.

1. A title that names the event.
2. The word FREE, and make it loud.
3. The giveaways, listed out by name.
4. The date.
5. The time.
6. A phone number to text or a link to register.
7. The exact address of the venue.
8. A disclaimer at the bottom: “There is a system and budget for giveaway distribution.”
9. A line asking people to share it and tag a friend.

You can build it in Canva. It does not need to be pretty. It needs to be bold and clear enough to read in 2 seconds on a phone.

The settings that matter

Ads Manager has a lot of switches. These are the ones I care about for an event.

• Start about 2 weeks out. That is the window I use for every event.
• End the ad the day before. Do not run it the day of the event.
• Target the venue address, 5 to 10 miles around it. At $500 I use about 10 miles. With less than that I pull in closer to 5, so the ad hits one area hard.
• Open the post with the place. “Attention Maryland” or your city name tells people right away this is for them.
• Send them to a free registration. Eventbrite works well for this. It collects the name, email and phone, and it gives you a rough head count.
• Get the phone number. This is the one that changes everything, because people forget and a text reminds them.

An outreach can run on $200 to $500. Aim for registrations under $15 each, and do not let them run past $30 without asking why.

Getting them to show up

This is where most churches lose. They get 400 registrations, they go quiet, and 40 people come.

With automated reminders alone, expect about 10% of registrations to show. When your team calls to confirm, I have seen it go as high as 80%. Most events land between 30% and 50%.

Send a text the day before and another the day of. For a Saturday night service, noon on Saturday works well. Then have your team on the phones that week. Set out chairs for the 30% and keep a stack ready for the 50%.

What this has done

These are events I worked on, with the real numbers.

• Easter at River Church Baltimore. $933 in total ad spend at $2.48 a lead. 1,153 free tickets claimed and over 400 first-time visitors. The best ad was a simple flyer for free Easter baskets.
• Gibsonton. A $200 Facebook boost brought 895 registrations and about 600 people, with very little flyering.
• Lakeland. $300 in ads and about 500 flyers brought over 1,000 registrations. Around 900 people came across 3 nights. I was an intern on that one, and it is where I learned this.

Those were not big budgets. They were clear bait, tight targeting, and people on the phones.

Questions pastors ask

Disclaimer. The results in this article belong to the specific churches and events named and are not a promise of what your church will experience. Growth depends on your city, your budget, your follow-up execution, and how consistently your team works the system.