Low-Budget Outreach Ideas

Outreach activities bring a church group into the heart of a community. Outreaches are simply churches helping others outside the four walls of the church. A church on a limited budget can participate in outreach by choosing service types of outreaches. An outreach that serves people in the community is called "servanthood evangelism."

Provide yard maintenance to some of the elderly and handicapped citizens of your neighborhood or community. Volunteers can bring their own lawn equipment and offer their time to work on these projects. The leader would need to bring water to keep volunteers hydrated and garbage bags to remove trash. During the winter, outreach workers could bring their own shovels and clean off sidewalks and driveways for the elderly. The leader could provide hot coffee and doughnuts before and after the event.

Low-cost seasonal ideas like gift-wrapping services are fun outreaches. Parents who do not enjoy gift-wrapping can bring their gifts and wrapping supplies to a wrapping station, where volunteers will gift-wrap for them. Alternatively, the outreach ministry could purchase inexpensive wrapping paper and supplies. Wrapping paper workers would volunteer their time. At Easter, an outreach could be an inexpensive egg hunt using plastic eggs and donated candy.

Take your outreach team into the business field. Offer to bag groceries for free at your local grocery store. Tell volunteers to be polite, smile and thank the customer for shopping at the store. Another outreach would be cleaning the parking lot of a business near your center or church. Community trash pickups are worthy outreaches that require little except willing volunteers.

Outreach volunteers should give bottles of water away on hot summer days. Take your outreach team to a four-way stop or red light and give away bottles of water to thirsty drivers. Hold up signs that say “Free Water.” The cost of this outreach would be the cost of ice for the water and the water bottles.

Take outreach volunteers into a needy community and hold a sidewalk Sunday school. Volunteers gather children together in a yard after meeting parents and guardians. They then share a Bible story, sing songs and play some games. This low-cost outreach needs only an illustrated Bible and some candy. The outreach workers may want to bring blankets or towels for everyone to sit on together.