Here, step by step, is how St. Thomas Aquinas Church, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, planned and carried out a massive evangelization project, “Outreach ’96.” The brain-child of our pastor, Msgr. Douglas A. Raun, the campaign required us to develop this detailed action plan.
By using our strategies and adapting them to the needs of your own parish or diocese, you too can reach every household in your area. The following pages are an adaptation of a report I submitted to Msgr. Raun and the organizers of the program.
The Purpose of Outreach ’96
1. To show the Catholic Church’s presence in the community of Rio Rancho and its concern for souls by contacting every address in the city (17,200) by mail. Door-to-door follow-up was initiated in selected neighborhoods in the northeast and northwest quadrants of the city, reflecting our special concern for persons residing the furthest from St. Thomas Aquinas Church, the city’s sole existing parish.
2. To reach out to inactive Catholics.
3. To evangelize the unchurched and those with no current church home.
Mailing Preparations
1. Purchase a mail permit for receiving postage-paid return replies. The cost varies, depending upon how many replies are anticipated. The post office provides the camera-ready bar codes which you must have printed on your return reply postcard or envelope.
2. Obtain a list of all postal routes in vour area from the post office. Pick up plenty of mailing trays, together with cards for identifying the trays according to route. These are available from the post office at no charge.
3. Purchase literature produced by third parties: We used Catholic Answers’ pamphlet Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth and a Divine Mercy prayer card. [Catholic Answers: P.O. Box 17490, San Diego, CA 92177, (619) 541-1131; Marian Helpers: Stockbridge, MA 01263, (800) 462-7426.]
4. Bring the camera-ready artwork for all other material to the printer. We had a letter from our pastor, a return reply postcard, and an envelope. Remember to have imprinted on all envelope your parish’s bulk mail permit number and return address.
The bulk mail permit number allows you to mail at a sharply reduced rate. The more saturated the mailing, the steeper the discount. Since we mailed to every home in the city, we were entitled to the maximum discount. Instead of paying $0.32, the rate for regular first-class mail, we paid only $0.06, the lowest rate for a saturation mailing by a non-profit organization. The discount translated into an overall postage savings for us of $4,472.
5. Contract with a mailing house to stuff, seal, and label your packets, or do what we did. We lined up volunteers to stuff envelopes. Let people bring materials home to stuff if they prefer-but be certain to give them a deadline for returning them. All the envelopes will have to be sorted by zip code, and the sorting must follow detailed post office rules.
6. Count out sufficient mailings for each postal route and fill the trays accordingly. Stack the trays according to the appropriate route number. You can stagger the mailings over several weeks, as we did.
7. Fill out post office paperwork, have the check written, and then deliver everything to the post office.
NOTE: Our cost per piece, including printing, booklets, prayer cards, and postage, was $0.58, and the total cost of reaching 17,200 homes was $9,976.
Training Volunteers
We offered two training sessions: “Spiritual/Theological Foundations of Evangelization” and “Practical Do’s and Don’ts (Role Playing).”
During the second we practiced the key questions to be asked during the door-to-door phase:
“Are there any baptized Catholics in this home?”
If yes: “Are you registered at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish?”
If no: “May we register you now?”
If there are no Catholics in the home: “Do you have a church home?”
If yes: “Thank you for your time. God bless you.”
If no: “Have you ever considered worshiping with us at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church?”
It is important to ask for volunteers to act as team captains. Assign them areas and workers. The team captains’ responsibility is to ensure that areas assigned to them are covered. Evangelizers are to go out two by two, never alone.
Instruct teams to take good notes on each home they visit. Minimally, the address should be indicated, as well as flagging Catholic and non-practicing families. These are the people who need follow-up contact.
Other Preparations
1. Ask contemplative communities, as well as any neighboring religious communities, to pray for the success of your evangelization project. We asked the Felicians in Rio Rancho; the Poor Clares in Roswell and in Alexandria, Virginia; the Carmelites in Santa Fe; the Handmaids of the Precious Blood in Jemez Springs, New Mexico; and the Dominican Sisters in Summit, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
2. Remember to ask your suffering sick and elderly to offer their prayers and sacrifices for the project. Help them to see the value of their suffering when united to the cross of Jesus Christ.
3. Run bulletin articles weekly, explaining the purpose and progress of your outreach. Pick a special logo and use it every week. We used one depicting a field worker with arms full of grain and a caption from Sacred Scripture, “The harvest is plenty, laborers are few.”
4. Print up plenty of parish registration forms. Distribute these to your evangelizers, and encourage them to register people at their homes if convenient.
5. Make identification badges for your evangelizers. One of our volunteers took a picture of the church with our signboard, telling the Mass schedule, in the foreground. We had 100 copies made, then took them to the printer and had them cut, stamped the church name on the back, laminated them, cut a hole and put a string through, and then gave one to each volunteer.
6. Set a date for welcoming newcomers and also for welcoming back inactive Catholics, so your volunteers can tell interested people the details.
7. Send out press releases to local newspapers. Let the community know you’re going to be around.
8. Encourage your evangelizers. Speak with them frequently. Meet with all captains at least once a week. Encourage them to keep in contact with one another, especially where their areas may overlap.
9. Post maps of your community in high-visibility locations, such as on the doors of the church, so parishioners can see the progress that is being made.
10. Keep your postage meter filled or keep on hand plenty of stamps so you can expeditiously respond to families who need follow-up.
11. Ask everyone to pray.
12. Include the outreach effort in your intercessory prayer at Mass.
Response Phase
1. You will begin receiving feedback from at least three sources soon after you begin:
— volunteers’ notes
— reply cards returned through the mail
— parishioners calling to tell you about someone they know who should be contacted
2. Have fliers printed announcing your “welcome back/ inquiry” session. Advertise it in your local paper. Put a notice in the religion section or upcoming events section, in addition to your ad. Announce the event on your community-access cable channel’s bulletin board. Send a notice to the radio stations.
3. Go through evangelizers’ notes and determine which persons need registration forms sent out to them, as well as who seems to need an invitation to your “welcome back/inquiry” session.
4. We recommend that you do not print addresses directly from a database. Hand-address all envelopes, and include a hand-written message on a “sticky note” to personalize the communication. Send a flier announcing your “welcome back/inquiry” session to everyone you contact.
5. Copy any reply cards on which the respondent has indicated having a problem with the Church. Refer all these to clergy.
6. For the “welcome back/inquiry” event, our pastor met with the returning Catholics, and our vicar met with the inquirers, for about an hour. We had greeters out in the parking lot to welcome our visitors. Then we had the groups come together for a closing prayer and a social. At this time the clergy scheduled appointments with anyone who wished further assistance, and our RCIA team leaders were on hand to provide further information to inquirers.
Time Frame
Our organized teams more or less systematically covered their targeted neighborhoods during a seventeen-day period, April 14-30, 1996. (We began on Mercy Sunday).
After evaluation, these teams decided to cover another designated area, which they did from May 5-15.
Meanwhile, we encouraged all parishioners to cover at least their own street. The response to this call was very limited. Still, this additional involvement expanded our coverage.
Conclusion
Outreach ’96 completely saturated the city of Rio Rancho in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ -17,200 addresses in a city of 50,000 inhabitants.
Evangelizers made face-to-face contact with 1,500 families, and nearly 400 persons sent in reply cards. Most of these persons requested registration forms.
Nearly 200 new registration have been received, and the spiritual lives of those who participated as evangelizers have been revitalized.
The program has led to the engagement of internationally-known evangelist Dr. Scott Hahn by our parish, in cooperation with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Contrary to the expectations of many evangelizers, we received only two negative postage-paid replies, and there were fewer than a dozen reports of doors being slammed in the faces of our parishioners. Thus, friendly or neutral responses exceeded 99 percent.
Outreach ’96 has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for our parish and has generated a tremendous enthusiasm for evangelization among our parishioners.