California Women's Ministry Retreat Expansion Campaign

Christian Women’s Ministry Retreat Growth & Expansion Campaign
Bakersfield, CA 2017
Lynn Bradshaw & Carole Leathem, Valley Baptist Church
 
Goals:

• Grow the annual women’s retreat attendance from the usual 30 attendees.
• Gain interest and retreat registrations from both saints and God-seekers.
• Inspire, educate, and spiritually motivate Valley Women.
• Provide Spiritual warfare training: Women leave the event equipped to go back into their lives ready to do spiritual battle.
• Identify opportunities to serve, train, and encourage.
• Ignite interest and pre-registrations for next year’s retreat.

Strategy:

• Start promoting early.
• Develop and deliver four programs to inspire, educate, and motivate attendees to trust God more, progress from their current spiritual status to a more dependent and loving relationship with God, and enthuse attendees to desire to come back next year and bring their friends.
• Utilize a wide variety of engagement vehicles including music, PowerPoint, audience participation, handouts, and group interaction.
• Train for comprehension and reproduction: Equip listeners to share what they learned.
• Share the love of Christ with everyone encountered in or outside of ministry settings.

Outcome:

• From 30 previous to 191 attendees, many who had never been to a women’s retreat before.
• Spiritual passion: 79 women showed up on Saturday morning at 6 AM to experience solitary time with God.
• Obvious expressions of love, vulnerability, and spiritual growth among the women throughout the weekend.
• Due to the number of women who expressed interest in, or preregistered for, next year’s retreat, the Valley Baptist leadership team decided to move next year’s retreat to a bigger venue where they would have room for up to 400 attendees.

Tactics:

• Use short, promotional video clips early and often.
• Share and interact on the group’s Facebook page.
• Publicize retreat details, posters, and benefits early, included three dates: retreat date, final registration date for a discount, and the date registration opened.
• Identify opportunities to encourage the leadership team and recommend retreat or promotional components that could improve campaign outcomes.

• Commitment for in-and-out involvement: Train and equip attendees to live out their faith and share it with others, and then leave without the need for substantial additional involvement.
• Create deep sense of team, closeness, and vulnerability between attendees, team members, and God. Fill the gap in women’s lives with God and His family.
• Invest extra one-on-one time with leaders and guests as possible.
• Sell books and CDs at event to ensure:
  • implementation of new skill sets
  • review of the original content in context
  • ability to share content with more audiences
• Strategize with leaders, pray, plan and release.
• Follow-up with online and phone meetings as needed.

Strategic Partners:

• Lynn Bradshaw & Carole Leathem, Valley Baptist, Bakersfield, CA
• Lakeview Forest Home, Forest Falls, CA

work with Marnie