You’ve finally found the perfect Bible study for your next group meeting.  You want to make sure that this study is practical and impactful. The ways you promote your study will influence your message. If you want to make the most of the time you are investing, it is good to plan your promotion carefully.

A successful Bible study starts way before your first scheduled study session. It begins with thoughtful promotion. Let’s look at a few helpful ways to promote your next Bible study with Pan American Broadcasting.

Promote Early

If you want the best response and attendance from others, you should start promoting the study early. To increase excitement and ensure that people can plan to come, you should start spreading the word two months before your first session. This may seem like a while, but this is an excellent way to help people carve out time for the study.

Adding something new to a schedule can be daunting. Give people plenty of time to schedule this.

Official Announcements

Your upcoming Bible study should be a regular part of church announcements. This will keep the event at the forefront of everyone’s minds. If your church offers many different avenues for announcing upcoming events, be sure to use all of the various options.

Sign Ups

It is super important that you make sign-ups available early on. You can encourage attendants with special prizes, such as a drawing for the first X number of people who sign up. This also provides a fun kick-off night activity when you draw the name for the prize.

Make sign-up easy by providing sign-up sheets in multiple locations.

Posters

Your Bible study will need a few posters promoting the study’s name, date, and time. Choose high-traffic areas in the church where you are sure your targeted audience will see the info. Sometimes people miss information in the announcements, so posters are a great backup to ensure the information is getting out there.

If the study you are conducting provides promotional posters, take advantage of that. If the study does not have ready-made posters, creating a few of your own is easy. You can make them look more professional by printing images at home and then mounting them on a poster board or foam board.

Promotional Video

A lot of ready-made Bible studies that you can purchase will come with a promo video that you can use. Make use of these. If you don’t have access to this tool, don’t hesitate to create your own video. Creating an eye-catching video is easy by using simple slide show software such as Google Slides or Adobe Spark Video. This is an excellent opportunity to learn something new and create a great promotional tool for the study. Or consider announcing the service over a radio broadcast!

Invitation Cards

Another wonderful way to promote your upcoming Bible study is to create invitation cards. Again, some Bible studies come bundled with all of these types of promotional materials. If you have access to that, great, use it. But even if you don’t, you can still create beautiful postcard-style invites at sites like Vista Print. Work with church staff to get a mailing list of everyone who would fit the potential audience.

Receiving one of these in the mail may reach people who would have otherwise been unaware of the event.

It is also a good idea to have extra printed so enthusiastic helpers can pass them out in other places.

Email Invite

Don’t stop with snail mail. The email invite is yet another way to keep the information moving. Even if someone has seen your other announcements, this is a great way to send a little reminder. Making digital signup available through your email invite is also helpful. This provides yet another way to connect with potential attendees.

Social Media

Today, social media plays a significant role in how we receive information. Use the social media channels that your church offers if they exist. Post your details if you have the ability to do so. If the church has a designated social media manager, get in touch with them to make sure your announcement is made on social media and to establish a regular timetable for when it will be made up until the date.

This is also a good place to add a digital sign-up option. Contact us to learn more or to get your group promoted over the radio!

The Autonomy of the Local Church

The average churchgoer likely gives little thought to the church’s organizational structure. This topic has been a critical aspect of church history, and even today, it influences how a church operates. The organizational structure of a church will affect how church business is managed, how discipline is carried out, and how the church can grow and change over time.

For these reasons, the topic of church autonomy is an important one, and one that companies like Pan American Broadcasting should consider when working with congregations. The New Testament teaches that the local church should be autonomous, but when we look at what this means, we quickly realize that many churches do not fall into this definition.

Let’s take a look at church autonomy to get a better understanding of this important Biblical concept.

What Does Autonomy Mean?

In general, the term autonomy or autonomous means self-governed. It means that an organization is not under the rule or authority of a higher entity.

When we discuss church autonomy, however, it is important to remember that the church can never be truly autonomous because it is always under the authority of God and the Word of God. So, when discussing church autonomy, we are really discussing how the church is organized and run here on earth.

Let’s be clear on another point as well: the local church vs. the universal church. When the Bible refers to “the church,” it references the universal church, the body of believers throughout the history of the world. When discussing church governance and autonomy, we refer to the local church. This would include a physical church where local believers gather to worship and serve.

With these terms more clearly defined, our question becomes, “What does the Bible teach concerning the local church’s autonomy?”

New Testament Examples

If we claim to be a New Testament church, we must use New Testament churches as our example. Thankfully, there is recorded history concerning many New Testament churches established during Paul’s ministry.

The reoccurring theme throughout studying these churches is that each church’s organization, authority, and governance began and ended with that individual local church. Indeed, the Apostle Paul and other leaders often assisted several churches. Paul was a minister to many churches as he traveled. This was out of necessity, though; it was not a directive of God that one man should travel to many churches and minister through epistle letters.

The most crucial point we can take away from the New Testament example is that no overloading, established organization ruled these churches. Each church ruled its own affairs, with the assistance of Paul as a traveling minister who provided guidance and messages from God through his epistles.

Scriptural Basis

As in all areas of life in which we believe in the Gospel, we must have a scriptural basis for this. One crucial point here is to note that not only is it important when searching through the scriptures to find overt examples of certain activities, but it is also important when you find no examples of a specific activity. This is also significant if you find no example of something being done or said. There are no examples in the New Testament churches of one church attempting to rule over another church. There is no example of a group forming or being established by God to rule over the collective New Testament churches. This is significant in our study of church autonomy.

We find 1 Peter 5:1-3 in which Paul references “the elders who are among you” should “shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly…being examples to the flock.” Here we see the recurring theme that the congregation’s leaders were “among” the community. They were not displaced to some other location, ruling from afar. These were local leaders leading a local church.

Also, in Acts 14:23, “So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed and fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”

Individual elders were established for each church.

Responsibilities That Fall Under Church Autonomy

The scriptures clearly set an example that local leaders should lead each local church in that congregation and that the church is not obligated to outside rule or organization.

Under this church autonomy, the following responsibilities are held:

• Church organization
• Appointment of leaders
• Appropriation of funds
• Church discipline
• Church growth
• Other categories as deemed necessary by that local church.

Contact us to learn more if you have any questions about this concept or are interested in establishing a Christian radio broadcast!