Have you had trouble deciding when to launch your portable church? There are fifty-two Sundays to choose from each year; so which one will work best for your church? Today, we’re chatting with John D. Smith, pastor of Northview Church’s Fishers Campus. He has seen Northview Church launch two churches on Super Bowl Sunday, a date he believes is memorable and significant…the perfect combination for your launch campaign! Read the interview below to find out how you can make launching on Super Bowl Sunday work for you and your church.

Why did your church decide to launch on Super Bowl Sunday?

Each time we launch a major new ministry initiative, or a new church, etc. we put a great deal of emphasis and promotion into the launch or Grand Opening. This generates momentum of its own. Super Bowl Sunday is something your launch team and the community can hang onto and not forget because it is a significant day. Those who are fully invested in your launch team are out working to invite their neighbors and co-workers weeks in advance and providing them with a memorable invite card or flyer for this significant day is a huge win. You start and launch with great momentum and then build on it for the next 2 months. Then Easter hits and you get a huge surge in momentum from what you have built on. (Many would choose Easter and we actually see this as a very poor time to start. Yes, you get a big bump for Easter weekend and then slowly ebb a bit toward the end of spring with busy schedules and then summer would hit and many churches bottom out launching in this time frame.)

We actually called the secondary piece of our launch Super Sundae (in the small print) and had ice cream sundaes for people after each service. Yes, we launched with 2 services setting the expectation that we needed this for all the new, unchurched people God would bring (our Fishers Grand Opening had 900 people the first Sunday). We intentionally see Super Bowl Sunday as a strategic launch time.

I think some people would be afraid to launch on Super Bowl Sunday as it is practically a national holiday… and the following day is usually a high corporate ‘sick day.’ Were you concerned about this at all?

No, the big national celebration takes place in the evening. Some might start during the afternoon, but this does not and did not affect our launch at all.

Launching on Super Bowl seems like a real FUN idea! Did you play off ‘Super Bowl’ at all in your ads, or in your messages on that Sunday? Did you do any events for the game that evening?

We had fun with some Super Bowl language during our services and the Super Sundaes with ice cream after the services. We did nothing to compete with the game during the evening. I think it would be a bad idea to try and pull our national culture away from the game. There is a large church in the Cincy area (Crossroads) who do what they call the Super Bowl of Preaching during this weekend. It goes over great for them. They have people tailgate and everything. However, they do nothing to compete with the game in the evening.

Any (other) special promotions you undertook to ensure attendance?

I don’t know that there is a “secret sauce,” as you might say. I do believe that something God’s Spirit has led us to do is working for a couple of months before our Commitment Sunday at the sending church for the launch of the new campus. We went to talk to small groups from the sending church that met in the area of the new launch. We set up a few desserts for people in the geographical area to share the vision. We then had the major topic of our Commitment Sunday at the sending church focus on our vision of reaching the unchurched and challenged people to commit who lived in the launch area. We actually make this a fully missional launch. We only launch the campus at least 30 minutes away from the sending church where we have a good number of members or attendees. We challenge these people to be missionaries to their community to invite their unchurched neighbors and co-workers in their backyard. We also do a direct mail piece at least twice to the major zip codes in the area.  

How did being a portable church affect your launch?

I would imagine some, but we did not really see a problem except for the obvious things of setting up and then tearing down any promotional material or sets you bring out every week. Great communication and promotion along with street signs, etc. near your portable venue take care of these issues.

Any other words of wisdom for churches looking to launch on Super Bowl Sunday?

We believe this is the first or second highest momentum time of the year to launch a new church campus. Please keep in mind Super Bowl Sunday as a launch date means ramping up your strategy in September or early October. We would be fully open to helping or talking with someone wanting to look at this strategy.

And there you have it! Do you think launching your church on Super Bowl Sunday would be a good fit for you and your church? Let us know in the comments below! And if you are interested in getting started with the launch process, please contact our team at Portable Church Industries and we will help you start considering your options.